On Monday, I left work early to go get some work done on my car, and after that I figured "what the hell, let's go by the library in Walhalla." I should emphasize that I left work with about an hour left to go, and it was past closing time when my car was ready after being fixed (just in case you're asking yourself "why didn't the lazy bastard go back to work?").
Anyway, I checked my email and there in my inbox was something from Clemson's graduate-school folks in the English department. Figuring it was a fifty-fifty shot (either I got in or I didn't), I opened the email and began to read. When I got to the first line, about how "pleased" they were to offer me an assistantship for the fall 2014 semester, I guess I could quit looking through my fingers at the email.
Yes, your hero got in, and I was offered an assistantship as well (meaning I get to teach classes or some other such things as the English department so desires of me, with a stipend and with tuition waived for the time being). You could say I was pretty darn happy with that.
All of this occurred on St. Patty's Day, so naturally it is now the best St. Patty's day ever (and I wore green to avoid getting pinched, though at this point I'm thirty-four-years-old and I'm guessing the likelihood of me running into people who still pinch others for not wearing green is pretty slim. Still, better safe than sorry).
I'm pretty stoked as well as terrified about the whole thing, truth be told. It's high on the list of "best things that ever happened to me so far." It's still sinking in, and I'm wondering now if I have what it takes for grad school. Specifically, if I can master the "too lazy to shave" stubble-beard of many a grad student I've known in the past, the carefully cultivated look of appearing not to care how I'm groomed. I kid, but it's really something pretty awesome (grad school, not facial hair).
I just hope the good people at Clemson know what they're getting themselves into by letting me back into their school.
Saturday, March 22, 2014
Saturday, March 15, 2014
Roger Miller, "King Of the Road"
A couple of weeks ago, Jake went missing from our home, and we feared the worst. He turned up a couple of days later, literally (I turned on the light overlooking his designated sleeping area on my porch just on instinct that Friday morning and there he was, like nothing had ever happened). But of course the thought that came to mind was that Jake had gone off to the woods or somewhere remote to die.
Jake, just for clarification, is our dog, or really my grandpa's dog. He's been with our family (first with my uncle, then with my grandparents) for at least twenty years. I'm not sure what that amounts to in dog years, but my guess is (from the reactions of people to whom I discussed his absence from our abode) it must be pretty ancient. Jake is back at home now, but it's safe to say that his time on this planet might not run much longer.
I am great with other peoples' pets (as well as their children) for the simple fact that I'm not the primary caregiver, By and large, I can get by with a stroke to comfort here (for the pets...don't get the wrong idea, people) or a well-placed gesture to elicit laughter or a smile from the children. Anything more than that (feeding the pets or changing the diapers of the children, just to pull two examples) is asking a bit much of me. I don't do well with poop, even when it's my own.
Thing is, I feel sometimes like I'm a little detached from ordinary life, from the lives of my peers on Facebook (the ones my age or younger who already have a decade or more of experience at parenting or pet-loving). I didn't have a girlfriend in high school, not even a "pity fuck" that could've resulted in an unwanted pregnancy and thus a life of drudgery to support said child by working a bunch of dead-end jobs. Oh, I've worked the dead-end jobs, it was just my lazy ass I had to support. Compared to some of my high-school chums (not any of the ones I'm friends with on Facebook), I got off easy.
But one byproduct of this luck has been some loneliness at times, reaching out for the wrong girl when I thought I couldn't do any better. The flip side is the insecurity that sees me pass up the chance I might have with not the "right" girl, but with the "right girl right now" maybe, because I have such a stellar record behind me to suggest that when it comes to this whole love thing, I'm a bit of a fuck-up. I think this is reflected in some of the relationships I have not just with romantic interests but with simple good-old-fashioned friends. There's a distance there that I sometimes put up, to keep from getting too involved. To keep from getting hurt, perhaps.
But hurt, as I'm quite aware of now, passes. It's been a little less than a year since I got hurt bad, and I guess it would behoove me to risk getting hurt again, if only to avoid a fate worse than the one I thought I avoided by not getting it on in high school: the fate where it's just you in a room, with no one around to share the room or your life with.
Jake is back, probably not for long (like I said, he's the Methuselah of dogs), but I'll try to pay more attention to him and enjoy his company until that day he really does go off to die. Maybe between work and home and work and home, I can find time for something more again. I'm a man of means by no means, as the song goes, but I get by. Maybe it's time to stop just getting by.
Jake, just for clarification, is our dog, or really my grandpa's dog. He's been with our family (first with my uncle, then with my grandparents) for at least twenty years. I'm not sure what that amounts to in dog years, but my guess is (from the reactions of people to whom I discussed his absence from our abode) it must be pretty ancient. Jake is back at home now, but it's safe to say that his time on this planet might not run much longer.
I am great with other peoples' pets (as well as their children) for the simple fact that I'm not the primary caregiver, By and large, I can get by with a stroke to comfort here (for the pets...don't get the wrong idea, people) or a well-placed gesture to elicit laughter or a smile from the children. Anything more than that (feeding the pets or changing the diapers of the children, just to pull two examples) is asking a bit much of me. I don't do well with poop, even when it's my own.
Thing is, I feel sometimes like I'm a little detached from ordinary life, from the lives of my peers on Facebook (the ones my age or younger who already have a decade or more of experience at parenting or pet-loving). I didn't have a girlfriend in high school, not even a "pity fuck" that could've resulted in an unwanted pregnancy and thus a life of drudgery to support said child by working a bunch of dead-end jobs. Oh, I've worked the dead-end jobs, it was just my lazy ass I had to support. Compared to some of my high-school chums (not any of the ones I'm friends with on Facebook), I got off easy.
But one byproduct of this luck has been some loneliness at times, reaching out for the wrong girl when I thought I couldn't do any better. The flip side is the insecurity that sees me pass up the chance I might have with not the "right" girl, but with the "right girl right now" maybe, because I have such a stellar record behind me to suggest that when it comes to this whole love thing, I'm a bit of a fuck-up. I think this is reflected in some of the relationships I have not just with romantic interests but with simple good-old-fashioned friends. There's a distance there that I sometimes put up, to keep from getting too involved. To keep from getting hurt, perhaps.
But hurt, as I'm quite aware of now, passes. It's been a little less than a year since I got hurt bad, and I guess it would behoove me to risk getting hurt again, if only to avoid a fate worse than the one I thought I avoided by not getting it on in high school: the fate where it's just you in a room, with no one around to share the room or your life with.
Jake is back, probably not for long (like I said, he's the Methuselah of dogs), but I'll try to pay more attention to him and enjoy his company until that day he really does go off to die. Maybe between work and home and work and home, I can find time for something more again. I'm a man of means by no means, as the song goes, but I get by. Maybe it's time to stop just getting by.
Saturday, March 8, 2014
Arcade Fire, "Haiti"
So, after the high-wire stress intensity of getting ready for the GRE, having the GRE delayed by weather, getting the GRE set up again, driving to Greenville to make sure I could get to the testing site, going to the testing site, taking the test, and getting out of there so I could go home and take a nap...
Now...we wait.
Thing is, I already know how I did on the test (fantastic on the reading, borderline on the math, which is kinda what I expected). I just don't know if that's good enough for Clemson. I guess this post should be about Tom Petty's "The Waiting Is the Hardest Part," but I thought that was a little on-the-nose. Plus, it occurred to me that I've never done a song post about the band whose actual name is in the title of this blog.
And I am nothing if not aware of said irony and its need to be addressed.
Plus, I need to address the post-test-taking spell that occurs, the grey limbo that comes not with not knowing how you did but with not knowing how the people you're hoping to impress into either giving you a job or more education are feeling about how you did.
It's great in that I got it over with and can now resume guilt-free reading of books that do not have "GRE" in the title unless it's "great," "gretzky," or "gregarious." The only such book I've read that falls into that category is a very good book about The Great Gatsby. I feel some relief that I can go into a library or bookstore now and look at the books without thinking "shit, I should really be focusing on studying for the GRE now." Truth be told, after the delay from my first test day thanks to snow, it was hard to open those books back up. It didn't feel like anything I hadn't read the first time around would stick any better the second or third (and I read those books, the math sections at least, like a readin' fiend). If I have to retake it, I'll review the hell out of the math sections (including actually performing some of the example problems, something that I should've done the first time around). But I was burnt out after stressing out over the test the few weeks that the first test date came around in, at the end of January. Truth be told, I might've done worse if I hadn't had the down time to think about it, to think about why I wanted to go to grad school, and to field all the questions from relatives and associates as to why I wanted to go back to grad school.
Now to Arcade Fire: the reason why I say they "saved" my life is not because Win Butler and the gang kept my school bus from going over a cliff into the valley gorge below (though that would make a cool story) but because when I got their 2007 album The Neon Bible, I was in a funk that wasn't fun. I wasn't cutting myself or driving recklessly to end it all or anything, but I felt like anything could happen and I'd be okay with it. But as dark and depressing as some of that album undoubtedly is (it wouldn't have been Arcade Fire), it gave me some reason to stop feeling miserable, and to pick my head up off the ground. The Virginia Tech shooting happened while I was in a funk, and that too helped to lift me out of it because I realized how the dreams of those victims who died as a result of some loser with an arsenal and a twisted agenda would never be realized. Also, around this time a kid who was going to be part of our family killed himself before a wedding. A month later, my friend Travis committed suicide. Out the window went the concept of suicide as "an artistic statement."
Life is too damn short to worry over some of the things we worry about, like money or popularity or whatever the hell it is that drives people. If money bought you happiness, would Donald Trump be such a miserable fucker? "Haiti" is the song by AF from their first album that is sung by Rene Chassagne, who is of Haitian descent. It predates the epic catastrophe that befell the island in 2010, when an earthquake destroyed much of the country and led to a humanitarian crisis which is still very much part of the story. It's an ode to loss, though, I think. It's a beautiful song, and one that I wouldn't have discovered if I'd never been in the funk that had led me to Arcade Fire in the first place. Maybe that's why I avoided writing about them for so long; it hit too close to home.
At any rate, I hope I get into grad school for the fall, but if I don't I can always try for spring of next year. And if even then, I can try my hand at something else. Yoda was wrong about the "do or not do, there is no try." There is always a "try," sometimes it's hard to do that though. I tried with the GRE and now I await whether my try was good enough for somebody else. But it was good enough for me.
Now...we wait.
Thing is, I already know how I did on the test (fantastic on the reading, borderline on the math, which is kinda what I expected). I just don't know if that's good enough for Clemson. I guess this post should be about Tom Petty's "The Waiting Is the Hardest Part," but I thought that was a little on-the-nose. Plus, it occurred to me that I've never done a song post about the band whose actual name is in the title of this blog.
And I am nothing if not aware of said irony and its need to be addressed.
Plus, I need to address the post-test-taking spell that occurs, the grey limbo that comes not with not knowing how you did but with not knowing how the people you're hoping to impress into either giving you a job or more education are feeling about how you did.
It's great in that I got it over with and can now resume guilt-free reading of books that do not have "GRE" in the title unless it's "great," "gretzky," or "gregarious." The only such book I've read that falls into that category is a very good book about The Great Gatsby. I feel some relief that I can go into a library or bookstore now and look at the books without thinking "shit, I should really be focusing on studying for the GRE now." Truth be told, after the delay from my first test day thanks to snow, it was hard to open those books back up. It didn't feel like anything I hadn't read the first time around would stick any better the second or third (and I read those books, the math sections at least, like a readin' fiend). If I have to retake it, I'll review the hell out of the math sections (including actually performing some of the example problems, something that I should've done the first time around). But I was burnt out after stressing out over the test the few weeks that the first test date came around in, at the end of January. Truth be told, I might've done worse if I hadn't had the down time to think about it, to think about why I wanted to go to grad school, and to field all the questions from relatives and associates as to why I wanted to go back to grad school.
Now to Arcade Fire: the reason why I say they "saved" my life is not because Win Butler and the gang kept my school bus from going over a cliff into the valley gorge below (though that would make a cool story) but because when I got their 2007 album The Neon Bible, I was in a funk that wasn't fun. I wasn't cutting myself or driving recklessly to end it all or anything, but I felt like anything could happen and I'd be okay with it. But as dark and depressing as some of that album undoubtedly is (it wouldn't have been Arcade Fire), it gave me some reason to stop feeling miserable, and to pick my head up off the ground. The Virginia Tech shooting happened while I was in a funk, and that too helped to lift me out of it because I realized how the dreams of those victims who died as a result of some loser with an arsenal and a twisted agenda would never be realized. Also, around this time a kid who was going to be part of our family killed himself before a wedding. A month later, my friend Travis committed suicide. Out the window went the concept of suicide as "an artistic statement."
Life is too damn short to worry over some of the things we worry about, like money or popularity or whatever the hell it is that drives people. If money bought you happiness, would Donald Trump be such a miserable fucker? "Haiti" is the song by AF from their first album that is sung by Rene Chassagne, who is of Haitian descent. It predates the epic catastrophe that befell the island in 2010, when an earthquake destroyed much of the country and led to a humanitarian crisis which is still very much part of the story. It's an ode to loss, though, I think. It's a beautiful song, and one that I wouldn't have discovered if I'd never been in the funk that had led me to Arcade Fire in the first place. Maybe that's why I avoided writing about them for so long; it hit too close to home.
At any rate, I hope I get into grad school for the fall, but if I don't I can always try for spring of next year. And if even then, I can try my hand at something else. Yoda was wrong about the "do or not do, there is no try." There is always a "try," sometimes it's hard to do that though. I tried with the GRE and now I await whether my try was good enough for somebody else. But it was good enough for me.
Sunday, March 2, 2014
Velvet Underground, "Rock and Roll"
Today is my little brother's birthday, he's twenty-four years old. Makes me feel old already. My sis will be twenty-six in a couple of weeks. Makes me feel older. So shout out to my brother at the top.
Also, today is what would've been Lou Reed's seventy-second birthday. As you no doubt know, the man passed away last year (not too long ago, right around Halloween), and I miss him. No, I never met him personally nor do I claim any special kinship with him, having never done drugs, homosexual/transvestite sex acts, nor led a band that changed what popular music could address subject-wise or sonically. But I loved the man's art.
Tonight the Academy Awards air and, though I've not seen any of the films nominated (not much of anything new anyway, except for the new "Muppet Movie" when it came out on DVD two years ago), I do like to watch because anything that turns a celebration of the arts into a competition is compelling and watchable. Plus, I'm a fan of the "dead reel," the annual look back at who we've lost in the particular field that the awards show highlights. It's not morbid, just something that I think reflects well on our now-is-now culture, our self-obsession with the notion that anything worthwhile has been done in the past twenty years and that history is just a backdrop to our own navel-gazing, Twitter-obsessed present-day. One would hope that, had they had Twitter or other social media in their day, historic figures in the arts like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Homer wouldn't have wasted precious time that could be spent writing or drinking by getting into "tweet wars" with anonymous hacks.
One would hope, anyway.
We've lost some big ones this past year, including the most recent big loss of last week, Harold Ramis. They'll all get their due this night, in the form of a clip of them at work, with their name and what they were best known for. And some muted applause, though some will get more than others (I'm guessing Philip Seymour Hoffman will get some prolonged applause, as well he should). The dead reel is a great thing about the Oscars and other awards shows that I hope we don't lose in our me-first, this-is-now and the-past-is-just-our-prologue present. It's not the highlight of any Oscar broadcast, but a moment to remember what we've lost. It's a public memorial squeezed into the free minutes towards the end of a self-congratulatory excess, and I like it that way.
Also, today is what would've been Lou Reed's seventy-second birthday. As you no doubt know, the man passed away last year (not too long ago, right around Halloween), and I miss him. No, I never met him personally nor do I claim any special kinship with him, having never done drugs, homosexual/transvestite sex acts, nor led a band that changed what popular music could address subject-wise or sonically. But I loved the man's art.
Tonight the Academy Awards air and, though I've not seen any of the films nominated (not much of anything new anyway, except for the new "Muppet Movie" when it came out on DVD two years ago), I do like to watch because anything that turns a celebration of the arts into a competition is compelling and watchable. Plus, I'm a fan of the "dead reel," the annual look back at who we've lost in the particular field that the awards show highlights. It's not morbid, just something that I think reflects well on our now-is-now culture, our self-obsession with the notion that anything worthwhile has been done in the past twenty years and that history is just a backdrop to our own navel-gazing, Twitter-obsessed present-day. One would hope that, had they had Twitter or other social media in their day, historic figures in the arts like F. Scott Fitzgerald or Homer wouldn't have wasted precious time that could be spent writing or drinking by getting into "tweet wars" with anonymous hacks.
One would hope, anyway.
We've lost some big ones this past year, including the most recent big loss of last week, Harold Ramis. They'll all get their due this night, in the form of a clip of them at work, with their name and what they were best known for. And some muted applause, though some will get more than others (I'm guessing Philip Seymour Hoffman will get some prolonged applause, as well he should). The dead reel is a great thing about the Oscars and other awards shows that I hope we don't lose in our me-first, this-is-now and the-past-is-just-our-prologue present. It's not the highlight of any Oscar broadcast, but a moment to remember what we've lost. It's a public memorial squeezed into the free minutes towards the end of a self-congratulatory excess, and I like it that way.
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