Right now (it is the same day) I am in my relatives' house in Omer, which is a town near Beer Sheva.
Classes were canceled today. I walked to the university before I found out. Confusing scene there. No one sitting outside where they usually sit. Everyone looking around at each other. People were standing only next to buildings and under overhangs. It felt like everyone knew something I didn't. It was my relatives who told me I didn't have class today.
Apparently five rockets hit Beer Sheva this morning.
We only had one alarm though because the alarms have stopped working here.
One rocket hit a high school this morning. Luckily no one was in school because classes had been canceled the night before. They didn't cancel our classes until later.
My relatives are watching the tv and listening to the radio to know when we have "adom" or red. The alarm. Whenever the phone rings everyone rushes to pick it up thinking that it is someone telling us it is an air raid siren.
We had one more alarm since I've been here in Omer with the relatives. Being here shows me I was a bit in lala land in the university. We just stayed behind thick walls there when we heard the alarms. Here, after the alarm my relatives went running directly to the bomb shelter, yelling to make sure everyone was in. Then they locked the door and stayed in for minutes.
It is required here that everyone have a bomb shelter in their house, or a room that functions as a bomb shelter with reinforced walls. It all seemed like overprotection before, now it jsut seems natural. We have some place to run to.
I'm going for now.
Tried reading, am not interested. Everyone milling around the house here. No one allowed outside. I think I will go to Tel Aviv tomorrow for a wedding in the family even though my cousin here tells me it's not safe to take the bus to Tel Aviv. She says this because the bus takes a route that brings it closer to Gaza on the way to Tel Aviv.
I think it will be fine.
You can see how we disassociate from Gaza though. It is really this area one just tries to stay away from.
I feel so inept with the children. We just ran into the bomb shelter again, and one of the kids started crying. When I went near her she just started crying more.
I kind of wish I were still at the university though everyone is leaving there. This morning there was this weird sense of community. The security guard was joking as he checked us all more closely than usual at the gate. And I became closer with my roommate running to get to shelter with her. I think the students have a better way of dealing with this than what's going on here. Here I can't even walk out of the house, where as at the university we were walking around with freedom.
Some perspective -- it's impossible to have perspective couped up in the house with all my relatives tense.
I went online and saw the protests in New York against Israel.
Wednesday, December 31, 2008
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
another one
There was another alarm and rocket this morning. I got out of bed and stood in the shower with my roommate. We heard the boom and then a bunch of ambulance sirens a couple minutes later.
That's it.
I read online that last night one of the rockets landed in an empty kindergarten.
My skin is still bumpy and red all over. :(
But everything is ok.
That's it.
I read online that last night one of the rockets landed in an empty kindergarten.
My skin is still bumpy and red all over. :(
But everything is ok.
Still up
I'm still up, it's the same night.
My second roommate didn't come back till midnight. She had been shopping. Came back with all the toilet paper we need for the next month. Doesn't mention what happened tonight as she comes in. I don't bring it up because I had texted her before to make sure she was alright.
She seems as if she's unaffected -- as gone and done the shopping, after school and everything, even after the rockets. But I can tell that by the amount she's talking to our other roommate she is more excited than usual. And then she calls, "Carolyn, What is this!?"
I come out of my room to see she is squatting over a brown stain on the floor. It had been wet there earlier, it had looked like water or something, I think it had come from our other roommate. I had noticed it and not done anything, even as I saw the wetness turn brown. But now my roommate is telling me that it is eating away at the floor and has affected the floor. She is already scrubbing it away -- her scrubs and her voice a scolding for me.
Yes, I should have cleaned it up. But this time I know it wasn't something I caused. AND, I see that she is stressed - that her mini floor freak out is her way of expressing her nerves from the night. So I just take it.
I do wish I had wiped it earlier though, I hadn't because for once it was a mess I hadn't made. The problem is I still get blamed for it!
My second roommate didn't come back till midnight. She had been shopping. Came back with all the toilet paper we need for the next month. Doesn't mention what happened tonight as she comes in. I don't bring it up because I had texted her before to make sure she was alright.
She seems as if she's unaffected -- as gone and done the shopping, after school and everything, even after the rockets. But I can tell that by the amount she's talking to our other roommate she is more excited than usual. And then she calls, "Carolyn, What is this!?"
I come out of my room to see she is squatting over a brown stain on the floor. It had been wet there earlier, it had looked like water or something, I think it had come from our other roommate. I had noticed it and not done anything, even as I saw the wetness turn brown. But now my roommate is telling me that it is eating away at the floor and has affected the floor. She is already scrubbing it away -- her scrubs and her voice a scolding for me.
Yes, I should have cleaned it up. But this time I know it wasn't something I caused. AND, I see that she is stressed - that her mini floor freak out is her way of expressing her nerves from the night. So I just take it.
I do wish I had wiped it earlier though, I hadn't because for once it was a mess I hadn't made. The problem is I still get blamed for it!
........
Ok so not going to think just going to write.
Almost two hours ago two rockets fell on Beer Sheva. Yes, Beer Sheva where I am living and going to school. I was in my room, trying to start my reading when I heard this noise outside and thought, hmmm... I wonder, wonder if that could really be the air raid sirens they told us about. But then I thought, no, they aren't loud enough. But then my roommate knocked on my door and I knew. She was running around. I said, do we stay here or do we go downstairs? (where there is a bomb shelter.) I couldn't remember the time they said we had after the sirens go off before the bombs hit.
Sometimes they say it is better to stay in your room. She said, no, lets go. and pointed to the wall with a window -that wall is where they are coming from. (our rooms face towards Gaza I guess.) Then she ran back to her room to grab her keys. I realized I wasn't wearing shoes. Put my clogs on and grabbed my keys, trying to be more organized like her. Though neither of us were thinking very clearly. She opened the door and ran through, I started to lock it, she said no just come. We ran downstairs, two flights. As we were running, I thought, it's probably a drill. We started running around the courtyard down there but then stopped behind a wall. I asked why and she said, probably safer to stay here than to go all the way to the shelter. Some boys come running excitedly to where we are. Loud, and laughing. Cracking jokes. I felt like cracking jokes too. I also felt like grabbing my roommate.
Then I heard a boom. And another. I looked at her and she said yes. It sounds like they are close. And then I started to grab her and realized everyone else was acting more normally so I didn't. A guy I know in my program comes running wildly by us. I called him and he comes back. He says, I was looking for you. Valiant, sort of, but fool hardy. He had been in the bomb shelter and ran out. His movements were jerky. His voice was jerky. His nerves were shaking his whole body.
Then we heard another boom. It is not as clear as I am making it. I heard the sound but wasn't sure what it was. One guy had cigarrettes and a bunch of people grabbed them. A girl in my program grabbed them immediately. She was standing next to me. It occurs to me now that she had been trying to quit the last three weeks. Had gone weeks cold turkey. But as I turned to go back upstairs I saw her there smoking. Didn't know whether to stay or to go. I went up to my room with my roommate but now I feel bad for leaving her there.
I guess we were all acting more in control than we actually were.
Then went to call my mom and cell phone service was out. The network was too busy. Finally got through.
I can go through the rest but I will stop.
I did not mean to make a big deal out of this, or to drag out the actually process of the whole thing, but that's what happened.
I am still shaky. I pretend that I'm not but the adrenaline was real. I started cooking about half an hour afterwards and realized I was not hungry at all even though I hadn't eaten since noon. It was the adrenaline.
But now for the perspective. I wrote an email yesterday to a friend about what Israel is doing in Gaza and was having trouble.
It is terrible. I think 360 people are dead there now, after only a couple of days. Basically Israel is bombing them, saying they are going for police stations etc, but because everyone lives so close together there, lots of people are getting killed. Plus, police men are people too. (Everyone seems to ignore that).
Life has been going on pretty much as usual here (up until now). It sounds terrible -- that we go to school and party etc. while people only a thirty minute drive away are getting the crap bombed out of them, but I think everyone is aware of it, they just don't talk about it. Well, they do, but not as much as one would think they do from the outside.
I was playing soccer yesterday and my old roommate mentioned the possibility of rockets here. I didn't take the idea seriously. I also didn't say anything but was thinking that it was wrong of us to think about attacks against ourselves when such a full scale bloodbath was being done to the Gazans.
I realize now it is much easier to think like that when one hasn't experienced the sirens or the bombs oneself. And I didn't even experience the bombs. I just heard the noises. I thought it was insensitive of Israelis to talk only about the possibilities of what could happen to us when mentioning "this new development" but now I see they were being realistic. It doesn't mean that what is going on in Gaza isn't much worse than what happened here, it is, but that doesn't change the fact that something did happen here. What was my point? I lost myself.
I want to say, yes, it really is a war here. It is a fucking war. While I was standing in the courtyard of our dorms, behind the big wall, I looked at the Israelis around me, and I thought, I finally get what it's about. It is one thing to say two rockets fell on Beer Sheva, it is another thing to stand outside and listen to them fall. Even though no one died or was even hurt one will always have experienced the feeling of being under attack.
I'm not saying this to legitimize what ISrael does to the Palestinians, only to say that after having had so many Israelis tell me, "you just don't get it" I can finally say I am starting to get it.
I think. I don't know.
My thoughts went to the boy I kept writing about on this blog (DO Not Call). The playboy pretty boy and thought, he lives with this kind of thing? Well, maybe he hasn't yet, but he is now. It's just so hard to think of even the young and immature dealing with stuff like this. But they do. I was standing outside in the courtyard with them -- three guys who were probably only eighteen.
I will go on a bit more. Back in the room with my roommate. She's calling her mom and her friends. She tells me that this was happening in her city this past weekend, where she was. She hadn't mentioned that to me. Can you imagine spending the weekend at home, having bombs falling on you there and not telling your roommates about it afterwards? IT is hard to imagine. And yet, I can tell, that this is far from nothing for her. They live with this and yet they cannot hide that it affects them. My old roommate, the one I play soccer with, called me just now to ask if, for the next alert she can come to my room because she lives above us and her room has huge windows. She said this time she went down three flights of stairs in her slippers and that by the time she got down it was probably past the time for the bomb to have hit.
Her voice sounds different. She sounds more shaken than I am.
Ok. I didn't want to make a big deal about it because here it is not a big deal. It is both a big deal and not a big deal. No one was injured or even hurt by the rockets in Beer Sheva.
But I am trying to imagine bombs landing in Amherst MA or Summit NJ, I just can't. The sense that where you are is not safe, is a very strange sense. Right now I feel safe again, but for a second, after I heard the first boom while standing behind that wall, I felt unsafe.
But, most importantly, and this is what I wanted to get to, Israel is really doing something terrible to the Gazans. Talk about feeling unsafe where you are. There they are not just hearing booms, they are seeing carnage.
I haven't been watching the news (no tv.) and have only gone online a little, and now don't know if I want to but I still know, and I've seen some videos.
From the videos I did see, I will say it is both comforting to see normal streets and stores in Gaza, and gut wrenching to see the blood, debris, and wreckage there too. I say it is comforting because the way Gaza is discussed here, even when it is not being bombed, is as if it were some infectious disease. It is a thing we all try to stay as far away from as possible. I saw "it" from a distance of maybe 100 200 meters this summer, standing on a hill next to the security fence, and still it seemed like a place of booby traps and death, even though I could see the buildings of Gaza city from where I stood.
Why? Because what people tell us clouds what our eyes can see. And all one hears about Gaza is either how they want to destroy Israel, about the rockets coming from there, about the need to build the security fence around them, about ALL the security devices in place around it, so that one feels that even by standing in the sightline of someone in this place, on the other side of the wall, one is in danger of dying.
The old, ultra conservative south african man, who gave us a "tour" of the Gaza border certainly did all he could to make us worry that we were in danger being there.
But in truth people live there, go to school, work, eat pray, same as they do in Israel. Some do send rockets at us, but the rest just live. It is nice to be reminded of that. Because otherwise we just see the place as a huge, seething enemy.
---------------------
In other news, and you are going to think this is blase, passe, un important, but for me it is. I have hives or something all over my body. No one seems to give a fuck. I might be vain for worrying about the bumps all over my neck and chest and shoulders, and back, and stomach because I don't want to look like this when I go to a cousin's wedding in two days, but I guess I am vain.
My mom asked me if I wanted to go home after the bomb alert. No I don't want to go home after that. Honestly, the thing that would make me more likely to go home is this feeling I have that I can't take care of myself here and that I don't have anyone here to take care of me. First I was sick. Then the skin on my face was a mess. Then that got better but now this. I keep trying and failing. Finally I went to the doctor about the hives, after two days of telling myself that it was not worth a doctor's visit. I was worried they would see me, and I don't know tell me to stop complaining. I just want someone who will make me ok, so that I don't always feel like I'm sick or something.
Ok, have taken a couple minutes. I am ok. Sorry for the whining. I think I've just developed an allergy to eggs and that's what caused the hives. I am deducing this after looking things up on the internet and from the knowledge that I was eating way way too many eggs the last two weeks. (It was my attempt to get more protein without having to cook meat. OOOOps.) The rash probably won't go away in time for the wedding but that's ok. And I am learning to eat a more balanced diet.
And I am safe.
The end.
Almost two hours ago two rockets fell on Beer Sheva. Yes, Beer Sheva where I am living and going to school. I was in my room, trying to start my reading when I heard this noise outside and thought, hmmm... I wonder, wonder if that could really be the air raid sirens they told us about. But then I thought, no, they aren't loud enough. But then my roommate knocked on my door and I knew. She was running around. I said, do we stay here or do we go downstairs? (where there is a bomb shelter.) I couldn't remember the time they said we had after the sirens go off before the bombs hit.
Sometimes they say it is better to stay in your room. She said, no, lets go. and pointed to the wall with a window -that wall is where they are coming from. (our rooms face towards Gaza I guess.) Then she ran back to her room to grab her keys. I realized I wasn't wearing shoes. Put my clogs on and grabbed my keys, trying to be more organized like her. Though neither of us were thinking very clearly. She opened the door and ran through, I started to lock it, she said no just come. We ran downstairs, two flights. As we were running, I thought, it's probably a drill. We started running around the courtyard down there but then stopped behind a wall. I asked why and she said, probably safer to stay here than to go all the way to the shelter. Some boys come running excitedly to where we are. Loud, and laughing. Cracking jokes. I felt like cracking jokes too. I also felt like grabbing my roommate.
Then I heard a boom. And another. I looked at her and she said yes. It sounds like they are close. And then I started to grab her and realized everyone else was acting more normally so I didn't. A guy I know in my program comes running wildly by us. I called him and he comes back. He says, I was looking for you. Valiant, sort of, but fool hardy. He had been in the bomb shelter and ran out. His movements were jerky. His voice was jerky. His nerves were shaking his whole body.
Then we heard another boom. It is not as clear as I am making it. I heard the sound but wasn't sure what it was. One guy had cigarrettes and a bunch of people grabbed them. A girl in my program grabbed them immediately. She was standing next to me. It occurs to me now that she had been trying to quit the last three weeks. Had gone weeks cold turkey. But as I turned to go back upstairs I saw her there smoking. Didn't know whether to stay or to go. I went up to my room with my roommate but now I feel bad for leaving her there.
I guess we were all acting more in control than we actually were.
Then went to call my mom and cell phone service was out. The network was too busy. Finally got through.
I can go through the rest but I will stop.
I did not mean to make a big deal out of this, or to drag out the actually process of the whole thing, but that's what happened.
I am still shaky. I pretend that I'm not but the adrenaline was real. I started cooking about half an hour afterwards and realized I was not hungry at all even though I hadn't eaten since noon. It was the adrenaline.
But now for the perspective. I wrote an email yesterday to a friend about what Israel is doing in Gaza and was having trouble.
It is terrible. I think 360 people are dead there now, after only a couple of days. Basically Israel is bombing them, saying they are going for police stations etc, but because everyone lives so close together there, lots of people are getting killed. Plus, police men are people too. (Everyone seems to ignore that).
Life has been going on pretty much as usual here (up until now). It sounds terrible -- that we go to school and party etc. while people only a thirty minute drive away are getting the crap bombed out of them, but I think everyone is aware of it, they just don't talk about it. Well, they do, but not as much as one would think they do from the outside.
I was playing soccer yesterday and my old roommate mentioned the possibility of rockets here. I didn't take the idea seriously. I also didn't say anything but was thinking that it was wrong of us to think about attacks against ourselves when such a full scale bloodbath was being done to the Gazans.
I realize now it is much easier to think like that when one hasn't experienced the sirens or the bombs oneself. And I didn't even experience the bombs. I just heard the noises. I thought it was insensitive of Israelis to talk only about the possibilities of what could happen to us when mentioning "this new development" but now I see they were being realistic. It doesn't mean that what is going on in Gaza isn't much worse than what happened here, it is, but that doesn't change the fact that something did happen here. What was my point? I lost myself.
I want to say, yes, it really is a war here. It is a fucking war. While I was standing in the courtyard of our dorms, behind the big wall, I looked at the Israelis around me, and I thought, I finally get what it's about. It is one thing to say two rockets fell on Beer Sheva, it is another thing to stand outside and listen to them fall. Even though no one died or was even hurt one will always have experienced the feeling of being under attack.
I'm not saying this to legitimize what ISrael does to the Palestinians, only to say that after having had so many Israelis tell me, "you just don't get it" I can finally say I am starting to get it.
I think. I don't know.
My thoughts went to the boy I kept writing about on this blog (DO Not Call). The playboy pretty boy and thought, he lives with this kind of thing? Well, maybe he hasn't yet, but he is now. It's just so hard to think of even the young and immature dealing with stuff like this. But they do. I was standing outside in the courtyard with them -- three guys who were probably only eighteen.
I will go on a bit more. Back in the room with my roommate. She's calling her mom and her friends. She tells me that this was happening in her city this past weekend, where she was. She hadn't mentioned that to me. Can you imagine spending the weekend at home, having bombs falling on you there and not telling your roommates about it afterwards? IT is hard to imagine. And yet, I can tell, that this is far from nothing for her. They live with this and yet they cannot hide that it affects them. My old roommate, the one I play soccer with, called me just now to ask if, for the next alert she can come to my room because she lives above us and her room has huge windows. She said this time she went down three flights of stairs in her slippers and that by the time she got down it was probably past the time for the bomb to have hit.
Her voice sounds different. She sounds more shaken than I am.
Ok. I didn't want to make a big deal about it because here it is not a big deal. It is both a big deal and not a big deal. No one was injured or even hurt by the rockets in Beer Sheva.
But I am trying to imagine bombs landing in Amherst MA or Summit NJ, I just can't. The sense that where you are is not safe, is a very strange sense. Right now I feel safe again, but for a second, after I heard the first boom while standing behind that wall, I felt unsafe.
But, most importantly, and this is what I wanted to get to, Israel is really doing something terrible to the Gazans. Talk about feeling unsafe where you are. There they are not just hearing booms, they are seeing carnage.
I haven't been watching the news (no tv.) and have only gone online a little, and now don't know if I want to but I still know, and I've seen some videos.
From the videos I did see, I will say it is both comforting to see normal streets and stores in Gaza, and gut wrenching to see the blood, debris, and wreckage there too. I say it is comforting because the way Gaza is discussed here, even when it is not being bombed, is as if it were some infectious disease. It is a thing we all try to stay as far away from as possible. I saw "it" from a distance of maybe 100 200 meters this summer, standing on a hill next to the security fence, and still it seemed like a place of booby traps and death, even though I could see the buildings of Gaza city from where I stood.
Why? Because what people tell us clouds what our eyes can see. And all one hears about Gaza is either how they want to destroy Israel, about the rockets coming from there, about the need to build the security fence around them, about ALL the security devices in place around it, so that one feels that even by standing in the sightline of someone in this place, on the other side of the wall, one is in danger of dying.
The old, ultra conservative south african man, who gave us a "tour" of the Gaza border certainly did all he could to make us worry that we were in danger being there.
But in truth people live there, go to school, work, eat pray, same as they do in Israel. Some do send rockets at us, but the rest just live. It is nice to be reminded of that. Because otherwise we just see the place as a huge, seething enemy.
---------------------
In other news, and you are going to think this is blase, passe, un important, but for me it is. I have hives or something all over my body. No one seems to give a fuck. I might be vain for worrying about the bumps all over my neck and chest and shoulders, and back, and stomach because I don't want to look like this when I go to a cousin's wedding in two days, but I guess I am vain.
My mom asked me if I wanted to go home after the bomb alert. No I don't want to go home after that. Honestly, the thing that would make me more likely to go home is this feeling I have that I can't take care of myself here and that I don't have anyone here to take care of me. First I was sick. Then the skin on my face was a mess. Then that got better but now this. I keep trying and failing. Finally I went to the doctor about the hives, after two days of telling myself that it was not worth a doctor's visit. I was worried they would see me, and I don't know tell me to stop complaining. I just want someone who will make me ok, so that I don't always feel like I'm sick or something.
Ok, have taken a couple minutes. I am ok. Sorry for the whining. I think I've just developed an allergy to eggs and that's what caused the hives. I am deducing this after looking things up on the internet and from the knowledge that I was eating way way too many eggs the last two weeks. (It was my attempt to get more protein without having to cook meat. OOOOps.) The rash probably won't go away in time for the wedding but that's ok. And I am learning to eat a more balanced diet.
And I am safe.
The end.
Sunday, December 28, 2008
AHHH I've gone crazy. It's 1:25 in the morning and I've just found new videos on youtube of Spring Awakening and I've been watching them... over and over.
It's hard to explain but I need whatever it is those kids have. Maybe it's a drug. I don't know.
I have another presentation tomorrow. It's about Iran before the Revolution. We read this really theoretical article for the presentation, and I don't think our presentation explains the article exactly, it's really scattered and not clear. But sometimes when I'm working with someone else I do not have the time to think things through myself so I let things get done... not as well as I would like them done. Also, I don't like always arguing with someone else if they think they have it and I don't think they have it but I'm not sure of what the right thing is. If I had been doing it myself I would have done a better job, but whatever. I was going to fix things tonight, but instead I'm doing this.
Actually writing this is helping me to detach myself from this coke like addiction I've developed to youtube. Maybe I will actually look at the thing tonight.
(MAtt Doyle is amazing. I know I said I was going to get over this, but I haven't...)
I met a bartender last night who has a twin brother. I hi fived him when he said it.
So writing the above got me to go and work on my power point presentation. It is now 2 in the morning but at least it is better than it was.
I think I have an allergic reaction to something. I am allergic to Israel.
I am going to bed happy though because of those Spring Awakening videos.
It's hard to explain but I need whatever it is those kids have. Maybe it's a drug. I don't know.
I have another presentation tomorrow. It's about Iran before the Revolution. We read this really theoretical article for the presentation, and I don't think our presentation explains the article exactly, it's really scattered and not clear. But sometimes when I'm working with someone else I do not have the time to think things through myself so I let things get done... not as well as I would like them done. Also, I don't like always arguing with someone else if they think they have it and I don't think they have it but I'm not sure of what the right thing is. If I had been doing it myself I would have done a better job, but whatever. I was going to fix things tonight, but instead I'm doing this.
Actually writing this is helping me to detach myself from this coke like addiction I've developed to youtube. Maybe I will actually look at the thing tonight.
(MAtt Doyle is amazing. I know I said I was going to get over this, but I haven't...)
I met a bartender last night who has a twin brother. I hi fived him when he said it.
So writing the above got me to go and work on my power point presentation. It is now 2 in the morning but at least it is better than it was.
I think I have an allergic reaction to something. I am allergic to Israel.
I am going to bed happy though because of those Spring Awakening videos.
Tuesday, December 23, 2008
Actually...
Actually, the presentation went well. Well, well enough.
At Amherst I didn't have the confidence to get up and bullshit, but here I do. Ok, it's not bullshit, but it is talking about something without a lot of preparation, and acting as I if I have the ability to talk about it. Last year I could not do it. Now I guess I believe for the first time that I have the ability (if I try) to understand things pretty well and to explain them, so even if I haven't done a great job figuring something out, what I've done is still pretty good. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's a big step for me.
I think instead of writing papers I should be giving presentations of some sort.
Today there was a sandstorm here. I think. All I know is the wind was blowing everywhere and there was a haze in front of the sun and in the sky.
It finally feels like Christmas/ holiday season. I guess because it's Hanukkah.
I'm sorry I write so much about school. I think everyone knows though that I am preoccupied with school work more than I should be. For some reason I am always a little bit stressed, and even if I am not acting as if I am, and do not think I am stressed about x/ y paper, often when I sit down to write, the first thing that comes to mind for me to write about is how I should be doing x or y. Maybe it is just a deeply internalized guilt. (I write this because I was just about to launch into how I should be doing work for my final papers but am not.)
I'm doing better than I was for a couple weeks. I ascribe the change entirely to a change in diet. Food makes a difference, apparently. I decided to start cooking for myself. At the moment all I can cook is omelets. But I make really good omelets. I am aware though that eggs, cheese, and some cut up vegetables is not a balanced diet. At least it's better than I was doing for a while.
My next step is meat. I also make good salads. It's a start.
Ok, yalla bye.
(I am in the computer lab. Do Not Call is here, but I'm not going to talk to him. )
PS. In this recipe exchange everyone will probably just get omelet recipes from me. (sorry). I can't tell you how to do anything else.
At Amherst I didn't have the confidence to get up and bullshit, but here I do. Ok, it's not bullshit, but it is talking about something without a lot of preparation, and acting as I if I have the ability to talk about it. Last year I could not do it. Now I guess I believe for the first time that I have the ability (if I try) to understand things pretty well and to explain them, so even if I haven't done a great job figuring something out, what I've done is still pretty good. I don't know if that makes sense, but it's a big step for me.
I think instead of writing papers I should be giving presentations of some sort.
Today there was a sandstorm here. I think. All I know is the wind was blowing everywhere and there was a haze in front of the sun and in the sky.
It finally feels like Christmas/ holiday season. I guess because it's Hanukkah.
I'm sorry I write so much about school. I think everyone knows though that I am preoccupied with school work more than I should be. For some reason I am always a little bit stressed, and even if I am not acting as if I am, and do not think I am stressed about x/ y paper, often when I sit down to write, the first thing that comes to mind for me to write about is how I should be doing x or y. Maybe it is just a deeply internalized guilt. (I write this because I was just about to launch into how I should be doing work for my final papers but am not.)
I'm doing better than I was for a couple weeks. I ascribe the change entirely to a change in diet. Food makes a difference, apparently. I decided to start cooking for myself. At the moment all I can cook is omelets. But I make really good omelets. I am aware though that eggs, cheese, and some cut up vegetables is not a balanced diet. At least it's better than I was doing for a while.
My next step is meat. I also make good salads. It's a start.
Ok, yalla bye.
(I am in the computer lab. Do Not Call is here, but I'm not going to talk to him. )
PS. In this recipe exchange everyone will probably just get omelet recipes from me. (sorry). I can't tell you how to do anything else.
Monday, December 22, 2008
AAHH!
AAAAHH! Presentation on 40 page article at 10 am tomorrow of which I've maybe read 10 pages and what I have read I don't understand. Why don't I understand? Because it is an extremely complicated discussion of other historians' writings, many of which I was already supposed to read for this class but have not. So, I feel incapable of talking about this article without trying to read all those articles that I did not read, which of course will not happen, because it's after midnight.
If I had started earlier I would feel better, and this article would be doable, but I was persuaded to go to another good bye dinner and it took up the whole night. So now I don't have the time to do a good job. DAMN it Carolyn.
My brain is starting to get tired. Damn DAmn Damn.
Fuck my teacher for giving me this article. It is really a joke. It is soooooo.....
I don't even know how to say.
The only real point I have gotten out of it so far is that the "STATE" is something constructed. AS in it's not real. HOWEVER, huhuhuh, because we believe it is real, it has some realness to it.
Sorry for the word realness, don't know what else to say.
AND, this is his other big point, even though the state is not real, one can study the history of how the state was constructed! SO, though this thing does not actually exist, it does have a history.
Good, four sentences, and yet somehow, he spends forty pages discussing the Ottoman empire in the 1600s.... No, discussing other people discussing the Ottoman Empire in the 1600s.
Damn, I am smarter than this.
If I had started earlier I would feel better, and this article would be doable, but I was persuaded to go to another good bye dinner and it took up the whole night. So now I don't have the time to do a good job. DAMN it Carolyn.
My brain is starting to get tired. Damn DAmn Damn.
Fuck my teacher for giving me this article. It is really a joke. It is soooooo.....
I don't even know how to say.
The only real point I have gotten out of it so far is that the "STATE" is something constructed. AS in it's not real. HOWEVER, huhuhuh, because we believe it is real, it has some realness to it.
Sorry for the word realness, don't know what else to say.
AND, this is his other big point, even though the state is not real, one can study the history of how the state was constructed! SO, though this thing does not actually exist, it does have a history.
Good, four sentences, and yet somehow, he spends forty pages discussing the Ottoman empire in the 1600s.... No, discussing other people discussing the Ottoman Empire in the 1600s.
Damn, I am smarter than this.
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
Quandary
I'm not finished with the presentation I have for tomorrow but I'm stopping for now.
It's amazing how inefficient I have become. I could never have survived highschool if I had let myself be as inefficient as I am now.
Today I played hooky from one of my classes to go to a soccer round robin in Tel Aviv. We tied one game zero zero and lost the other one like 5- 0. It was indoors (I'm saying that to explain how we were able to get scored on so many times.) So anyway, we're not good. But I'm really glad I went to the games instead of class.
It's embarrassing but I was tense all last night, couldn't sleep. Was worried I would oversleep and dissappoint the team. Disappoint the team by not showing up or not playing well. Don't know which I was more worried of. The whole thing was so laid back, I shouldn't have been nervous at all, but I was. That's the way I am.
My point was in the end I had a good time and the endorphins from the games have kept me on a high for the rest of today.
It probably seems strange that I am talking in terms of endorphins, but recently I have felt that if I do not have some kind of stimulation my head and body are so down. Down as in slow and down as in, well, down.
On the walk home from the University tonight I was a little down, but this I did to myself actively. The reason I am interested in studying Israel, the reason I found my history of Israel class more interesting than any of my others last semester, is that I find myself here always at a moral quandary. THIS - Israel - is one big problem for me. And I keep wanting, wishing I could just solve it. Who is right? What is right? So when I was walking home, this is what was on my mind.
Well, no. I was trying to pick a topic for my final paper for my class Milestones in the ARab Zionist Conflict. Adn this is what was bothering me so much. Because this is the conflict, this is it. So with this paper, I wante dto do what I have been waiting to do -- figure this thing out.
But I can't. I can't find a topic that will a) answer the question for me b) make for a doable paper.
Ok, so I know I cannot answer the whole question, Is Israel right to exist? with this one paper. Wait, actually I could. But it would not be a history paper, it would be a philosophical/ moral argument and this is a history class. I need to write a history paper.
Ok, that helps a bit. I have to write about history.
So then the question is what history? Do I do something on the British because their writings are easy to find and because we always seem to focus on the documents they wrote. For example, What did the British mean really mean when they wrote "A Jewish home In Palestine"? Did they mean all of Palestine, or just a small "home" somewhere in Palestine, ie. part?
I do find this stuff interesting, but then I think, what is the point? Zionists love to argue these points in British policy, but ultimately the British are not the arbitrars of right and wrong. Even if one can prove that the British intended for All of Palestine to be a Jewish State (which I don't think you can do) where would that get you? So at one point the British wanted a Jewish State in Palestine. So what? That doesn't make the current state anymore or less legitimate. It is just what the colonizers decided they wanted for a certain number of years. And then later they changed their mind.
But there is a point here. That must be why I am stuck on it. Because many people (Zionist historians) will always tell you that in the Balfour Declaration, the British declared their intent to help create a Jewish State in Palestine. And so even though, the Balfour Declaration is just the British government's declaration of policy, it has taken on a sort of idealogical importance, as if the legitimacy of the state is resting on this document. "THEY said they were going to give us a state. And then they didn't." That is the typical refrain. OR something like it.
I just talked to a girl in my group here who said, "Well, you know the whole document is really ambiguous." Maybe that's the answer, it was ambiguous. The end. They left the document ambiguous. Big Deal over ambiguous document.
But maybe there is something else. Why did they leave it ambiguous, if there were so many people in the British government who seemed ready to support something much less ambiguous?
MAybe that is a paper.
And then I think, I want to waste this whole paper on the Balfour Declaration which everyone has written and knows about, not to mention it is a topic that will probably just put me in circles...
So then I think, I should write about, something Arab, the other side. Like one of the major leaders or something. But there is a lot less information available on them. And just because I'm writing about the Arabs doesn't mean I will necessarily give myself anymore clarity on the subject as a whole......
Maybe I need to just screw my search for clarity right now.
Ok, then what drives me to decide what to write about?
Ani lo yodaat? (I don't know).
I walk around here and look at all the people around me, all the young students, studying everything from chemical engineering to some other form of engineering, because they all seem to be studying engineering, and think, I am contemplating whether they should even be here. That just seems so strange, not to mention.... cruel.
Ok, so usually I'm not walking around debating the legitimacy of Israel, but I am studying the struggle for and against the creation of the State of Israel. And when you study it you begin to see how tenuous it all is, how it came from so little not very long ago. How so many different arguments were made for and against its existence.
But most Zionists didn't concern themselves with justifications, they just concerned themselves with doing what was necessary to create the state of Israel because, put weakly, they wanted the state of Israel to exist.
It was all pragmatism. People pushing forward, doing what they had to, to make their dream come true. This is where Israel gets seductive, because it is literally a dream come true. It is a society living a life that only a couple generations ago people were wishing and hoping could some day possible exist. And so there is a constant feeling of energy, of movement here. Of desire.
So either you get stuck in is it Right? Or just in the dream. OR the fact that there is a lot of fighting here.
Maybe, the point is, it was a dream, and people made the dream come true. They argued that it was Right for them to make the dream come true, but ultimately maybe even they knew that they were not doing something because it was Right, they were doing it because they wanted it.
Zionists wanted a Jewish state in Palestine, and now there is a Jewish State in Palestine.
Whether they had done it by conquering or in however you define the way it actually occured, does not change things much. People would have done what it took to make this state. And it probably all wouldn't have been (was not even) right.
I don't think I made sense there.
It is not the end justifies the means, that is not the argument, if there is an argument, it is that the end overrides the means. This is what you are faced with here, what seems to stare you in the face. The means taken to create the state disappear, become passe, once the state is created. What you are left with is a modern state, a state where Jews and Arabs go to schools together, with hospitals and movie theaters, and with many peace loving liberals (but also lots of fighting and walls around arab towns). The state is point zero, and we move forward from there. That is one way of looking at it.
OR, you can keep looking backward.
1) to find out why everyone is fighting
2) to find out who is right.
Ahh... maybe I should forget this business of who is right, the number 2) , and just try to deal with the why everyone is fighting. As a historian it is my job to figure out what each side Believes is right, what motivates each side.
Here we go, (haha, title of the blog), I am overstepping my bounds right now. Maybe as a human being it is my responsibility to decide which side, which argument(s) are right in all of this, but as a historian, it is my job only to report on the arguments of each side. It is my job to understand the problem, not to solve, or judge the problem. I cannot judge this thing, AND do a history paper. They are two separate jobs.
That is why I have been driving myself crazy. Ok, so now I just need to pick a topic I am interested in.
I did this to help myself think. I know I didn't explain the Balfour Declaration, or even my train of thought. It was a very bad blog post. Sorry!
It's amazing how inefficient I have become. I could never have survived highschool if I had let myself be as inefficient as I am now.
Today I played hooky from one of my classes to go to a soccer round robin in Tel Aviv. We tied one game zero zero and lost the other one like 5- 0. It was indoors (I'm saying that to explain how we were able to get scored on so many times.) So anyway, we're not good. But I'm really glad I went to the games instead of class.
It's embarrassing but I was tense all last night, couldn't sleep. Was worried I would oversleep and dissappoint the team. Disappoint the team by not showing up or not playing well. Don't know which I was more worried of. The whole thing was so laid back, I shouldn't have been nervous at all, but I was. That's the way I am.
My point was in the end I had a good time and the endorphins from the games have kept me on a high for the rest of today.
It probably seems strange that I am talking in terms of endorphins, but recently I have felt that if I do not have some kind of stimulation my head and body are so down. Down as in slow and down as in, well, down.
On the walk home from the University tonight I was a little down, but this I did to myself actively. The reason I am interested in studying Israel, the reason I found my history of Israel class more interesting than any of my others last semester, is that I find myself here always at a moral quandary. THIS - Israel - is one big problem for me. And I keep wanting, wishing I could just solve it. Who is right? What is right? So when I was walking home, this is what was on my mind.
Well, no. I was trying to pick a topic for my final paper for my class Milestones in the ARab Zionist Conflict. Adn this is what was bothering me so much. Because this is the conflict, this is it. So with this paper, I wante dto do what I have been waiting to do -- figure this thing out.
But I can't. I can't find a topic that will a) answer the question for me b) make for a doable paper.
Ok, so I know I cannot answer the whole question, Is Israel right to exist? with this one paper. Wait, actually I could. But it would not be a history paper, it would be a philosophical/ moral argument and this is a history class. I need to write a history paper.
Ok, that helps a bit. I have to write about history.
So then the question is what history? Do I do something on the British because their writings are easy to find and because we always seem to focus on the documents they wrote. For example, What did the British mean really mean when they wrote "A Jewish home In Palestine"? Did they mean all of Palestine, or just a small "home" somewhere in Palestine, ie. part?
I do find this stuff interesting, but then I think, what is the point? Zionists love to argue these points in British policy, but ultimately the British are not the arbitrars of right and wrong. Even if one can prove that the British intended for All of Palestine to be a Jewish State (which I don't think you can do) where would that get you? So at one point the British wanted a Jewish State in Palestine. So what? That doesn't make the current state anymore or less legitimate. It is just what the colonizers decided they wanted for a certain number of years. And then later they changed their mind.
But there is a point here. That must be why I am stuck on it. Because many people (Zionist historians) will always tell you that in the Balfour Declaration, the British declared their intent to help create a Jewish State in Palestine. And so even though, the Balfour Declaration is just the British government's declaration of policy, it has taken on a sort of idealogical importance, as if the legitimacy of the state is resting on this document. "THEY said they were going to give us a state. And then they didn't." That is the typical refrain. OR something like it.
I just talked to a girl in my group here who said, "Well, you know the whole document is really ambiguous." Maybe that's the answer, it was ambiguous. The end. They left the document ambiguous. Big Deal over ambiguous document.
But maybe there is something else. Why did they leave it ambiguous, if there were so many people in the British government who seemed ready to support something much less ambiguous?
MAybe that is a paper.
And then I think, I want to waste this whole paper on the Balfour Declaration which everyone has written and knows about, not to mention it is a topic that will probably just put me in circles...
So then I think, I should write about, something Arab, the other side. Like one of the major leaders or something. But there is a lot less information available on them. And just because I'm writing about the Arabs doesn't mean I will necessarily give myself anymore clarity on the subject as a whole......
Maybe I need to just screw my search for clarity right now.
Ok, then what drives me to decide what to write about?
Ani lo yodaat? (I don't know).
I walk around here and look at all the people around me, all the young students, studying everything from chemical engineering to some other form of engineering, because they all seem to be studying engineering, and think, I am contemplating whether they should even be here. That just seems so strange, not to mention.... cruel.
Ok, so usually I'm not walking around debating the legitimacy of Israel, but I am studying the struggle for and against the creation of the State of Israel. And when you study it you begin to see how tenuous it all is, how it came from so little not very long ago. How so many different arguments were made for and against its existence.
But most Zionists didn't concern themselves with justifications, they just concerned themselves with doing what was necessary to create the state of Israel because, put weakly, they wanted the state of Israel to exist.
It was all pragmatism. People pushing forward, doing what they had to, to make their dream come true. This is where Israel gets seductive, because it is literally a dream come true. It is a society living a life that only a couple generations ago people were wishing and hoping could some day possible exist. And so there is a constant feeling of energy, of movement here. Of desire.
So either you get stuck in is it Right? Or just in the dream. OR the fact that there is a lot of fighting here.
Maybe, the point is, it was a dream, and people made the dream come true. They argued that it was Right for them to make the dream come true, but ultimately maybe even they knew that they were not doing something because it was Right, they were doing it because they wanted it.
Zionists wanted a Jewish state in Palestine, and now there is a Jewish State in Palestine.
Whether they had done it by conquering or in however you define the way it actually occured, does not change things much. People would have done what it took to make this state. And it probably all wouldn't have been (was not even) right.
I don't think I made sense there.
It is not the end justifies the means, that is not the argument, if there is an argument, it is that the end overrides the means. This is what you are faced with here, what seems to stare you in the face. The means taken to create the state disappear, become passe, once the state is created. What you are left with is a modern state, a state where Jews and Arabs go to schools together, with hospitals and movie theaters, and with many peace loving liberals (but also lots of fighting and walls around arab towns). The state is point zero, and we move forward from there. That is one way of looking at it.
OR, you can keep looking backward.
1) to find out why everyone is fighting
2) to find out who is right.
Ahh... maybe I should forget this business of who is right, the number 2) , and just try to deal with the why everyone is fighting. As a historian it is my job to figure out what each side Believes is right, what motivates each side.
Here we go, (haha, title of the blog), I am overstepping my bounds right now. Maybe as a human being it is my responsibility to decide which side, which argument(s) are right in all of this, but as a historian, it is my job only to report on the arguments of each side. It is my job to understand the problem, not to solve, or judge the problem. I cannot judge this thing, AND do a history paper. They are two separate jobs.
That is why I have been driving myself crazy. Ok, so now I just need to pick a topic I am interested in.
I did this to help myself think. I know I didn't explain the Balfour Declaration, or even my train of thought. It was a very bad blog post. Sorry!
Monday, December 8, 2008
Blah, Blah, Blah blah, blah, blah, blah.
There's a moment you know.... You're Fucked. Not an inch more room, to self destruct.
Am feeling the need to post right now. When will my life start to make sense? When will I start to make sense of my life. When will I be able to take in, hold, and put out information the way I want to and the way I should be able to?
Somehow there is a break down. Always a breakdown. Sometimes it seems easy to find the breakdown, as in now: I just started reading the over 100 pages I have to read for tomorrow, and have already stopped two pages into it. In class tomorrow I will not have the information I was supposed to have gotten from this article. The answer seems obvious, BECAUSE I did not read. This is the answer.
But FUCK. Sometimes I do read, I try to read, as I tried to read the beginning of this article, but I kept going over and over the same three paragraphs without internalizing any of it. And after the upteenth time, I just stopped. Not just with those paragraphs, but with the article entirely.
Somehow I couldn't get myself just to read the sentences. I kept trying to skim but would get to the end, get mad I did not know what I was reading, go back to the top (de capita, from the top), and yet still not READ the thing. Or maybe I was reading all the words, each time, but somehow, hard to explain, I was just too scattered to take them all in.
Sometimes I do take in the words I'm reading. Sometimes, I read with a purpose and I take things in, though even those times I have trouble remembering what I have read. But nevermind this, atleast I understand.
Other times I understand nothing that I read.
And this non understanding is what keeps me from reading. It is why I looked up from my book to check my email and why I am now doing this instead of reading.
Also, I was reading over what I wrote about Hilary Clinton a couple days ago. What is up on the blog is not what I originally wrote. It is not even a single edit of what I originally wrote. It is a couple layers of "fixing". But half hearted attempts at fixing. It was attempts to try to cut out my rambling sentences and to give myself a point. But somehow I made it more jumbled and unclear with the edits. And now the thing just reads funny. I don't really make a point. I read it, and even I, who wrote the whole thing am disatisfied. That is all I wanted to say? No. But in the attempt to be concise, I killed the content.
And It is not coherent because it does not represent, anymore, my train of thought. It represents me, editing this paragraph, or this other one, at different times, and cutting things out, and not dealing with the whole thing from start to finish, because I never do. And so, it just doesn't make a point. It doesn't go from one thing to another or work together.
The only time I can be cohesive is when I write what I am thinking - the first go round.
After that, when I edit, it is as if I cut gaps into my writing. I make one thing into a dozen half formed little pieces that don't work together.
It is so damn frustrating.
I guess, my real problem, is that with things like the Hilary thing, it was hard for me to figure out what I wanted to say in the first place. The first go round was rambling because I was thinking through my own thoughts as I wrote. But the second time I still did not know what my kicker was, I had never hit it as squarely as I should have. So in editing the second time round I was just trying to help the prose without a firm idea of what the final point - the cohesive whole should be. And so, I couldn't really improve the whole piece. I couldn't only help certain paragraphs, but often by improving the paragraphs separately, I moved them further away from eachother, so that they no long made a point together (if they ever did).
There's my problem, I can't commit to a thesis, and therefore my writing is unclear.
There's a moment you know.... You're Fucked. Not an inch more room, to self destruct.
Am feeling the need to post right now. When will my life start to make sense? When will I start to make sense of my life. When will I be able to take in, hold, and put out information the way I want to and the way I should be able to?
Somehow there is a break down. Always a breakdown. Sometimes it seems easy to find the breakdown, as in now: I just started reading the over 100 pages I have to read for tomorrow, and have already stopped two pages into it. In class tomorrow I will not have the information I was supposed to have gotten from this article. The answer seems obvious, BECAUSE I did not read. This is the answer.
But FUCK. Sometimes I do read, I try to read, as I tried to read the beginning of this article, but I kept going over and over the same three paragraphs without internalizing any of it. And after the upteenth time, I just stopped. Not just with those paragraphs, but with the article entirely.
Somehow I couldn't get myself just to read the sentences. I kept trying to skim but would get to the end, get mad I did not know what I was reading, go back to the top (de capita, from the top), and yet still not READ the thing. Or maybe I was reading all the words, each time, but somehow, hard to explain, I was just too scattered to take them all in.
Sometimes I do take in the words I'm reading. Sometimes, I read with a purpose and I take things in, though even those times I have trouble remembering what I have read. But nevermind this, atleast I understand.
Other times I understand nothing that I read.
And this non understanding is what keeps me from reading. It is why I looked up from my book to check my email and why I am now doing this instead of reading.
Also, I was reading over what I wrote about Hilary Clinton a couple days ago. What is up on the blog is not what I originally wrote. It is not even a single edit of what I originally wrote. It is a couple layers of "fixing". But half hearted attempts at fixing. It was attempts to try to cut out my rambling sentences and to give myself a point. But somehow I made it more jumbled and unclear with the edits. And now the thing just reads funny. I don't really make a point. I read it, and even I, who wrote the whole thing am disatisfied. That is all I wanted to say? No. But in the attempt to be concise, I killed the content.
And It is not coherent because it does not represent, anymore, my train of thought. It represents me, editing this paragraph, or this other one, at different times, and cutting things out, and not dealing with the whole thing from start to finish, because I never do. And so, it just doesn't make a point. It doesn't go from one thing to another or work together.
The only time I can be cohesive is when I write what I am thinking - the first go round.
After that, when I edit, it is as if I cut gaps into my writing. I make one thing into a dozen half formed little pieces that don't work together.
It is so damn frustrating.
I guess, my real problem, is that with things like the Hilary thing, it was hard for me to figure out what I wanted to say in the first place. The first go round was rambling because I was thinking through my own thoughts as I wrote. But the second time I still did not know what my kicker was, I had never hit it as squarely as I should have. So in editing the second time round I was just trying to help the prose without a firm idea of what the final point - the cohesive whole should be. And so, I couldn't really improve the whole piece. I couldn't only help certain paragraphs, but often by improving the paragraphs separately, I moved them further away from eachother, so that they no long made a point together (if they ever did).
There's my problem, I can't commit to a thesis, and therefore my writing is unclear.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
Thursday, December 4, 2008
late night
It's 1 :30 in the morning and I'm eating cornflakes.
Cornflakes Carolyn?
at 1 in the morning?
GO to bed. But I'm writing emails.
It's the end of the week. finally. I'm supposed to go on this trip tomorrow, but I'm not going to go. I'm going to go to bed late, possibly get wakened in the morning by someone asking if I'm going on the trip, Say no. Go back to bed, and be lazy the rest of the day.
No, I can't. I have to buy food before the shops close for shabbat. If I don't I will be stuck eating only cornflakes for the next two days.
I will probably do that anyway.
I was going to try to be healthier. That went to the wayside.
fdjkslaf;jdksla;fjdklsa;fjkdls;afhjkfldsahjk
bad week.
no money.
BUT, I think I could get into some of these classes.
K, bye.
Maybe I should just copy this and send it as my email.
Cornflakes Carolyn?
at 1 in the morning?
GO to bed. But I'm writing emails.
It's the end of the week. finally. I'm supposed to go on this trip tomorrow, but I'm not going to go. I'm going to go to bed late, possibly get wakened in the morning by someone asking if I'm going on the trip, Say no. Go back to bed, and be lazy the rest of the day.
No, I can't. I have to buy food before the shops close for shabbat. If I don't I will be stuck eating only cornflakes for the next two days.
I will probably do that anyway.
I was going to try to be healthier. That went to the wayside.
fdjkslaf;jdksla;fjdklsa;fjkdls;afhjkfldsahjk
bad week.
no money.
BUT, I think I could get into some of these classes.
K, bye.
Maybe I should just copy this and send it as my email.
Monday, December 1, 2008
Clinton as Secretary of State
I'm surprised Hillary is the new Secretary of State.
I'm not sure how I feel about it. I should be happy because I was more loyalty to Hillary during the primaries at first but... my first thought is.... shouldn't the Secretary of State be someone Obama is really tight with?
They have to think exactly alike, but they do have to be congenial enough to discuss things without taking disagreements personally. (I guess I'm thinking of the West Wing here, and that's not a good comparison because the characters on that were the President's staff, not his Cabinet members (Is secretary of state in the Cabinet? yes, right?).
But anyway, using my bad, and fictional reference point.... I do think that the policy makers should be open and comfortable enough with eachother to really throw everything on the table when they are together, so that they come to agreements they both support.
Somehow I don't see Hilary and Obama having these sort of honest... not tense meetings.
As much as the commentators say they don't hate each other, not hating is not enough. So what if they don't hate each other, they both have their own egos. They are the two biggest egos in the game right now. And when one ego is trying to protect itself from another it sees as threatening, there is conflict.
I think Hillary will always be wanting to assert herself to Obama. It is natural when faced with someone as charismatic and successful as Obama, (and someone who has beaten you,) to be defensive. But defensive feelings do not make a good working relationship.
Obviously I am not a political thinker, nor do I have much information. It's amazing how I can take so long to make a simple point. Oh well, I need practice expressing myself.
But yay for another female secretary of state.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
It's midnight and I haven't started my reading for tomorrow. DAMNIT.
I'm not sure how I feel about it. I should be happy because I was more loyalty to Hillary during the primaries at first but... my first thought is.... shouldn't the Secretary of State be someone Obama is really tight with?
They have to think exactly alike, but they do have to be congenial enough to discuss things without taking disagreements personally. (I guess I'm thinking of the West Wing here, and that's not a good comparison because the characters on that were the President's staff, not his Cabinet members (Is secretary of state in the Cabinet? yes, right?).
But anyway, using my bad, and fictional reference point.... I do think that the policy makers should be open and comfortable enough with eachother to really throw everything on the table when they are together, so that they come to agreements they both support.
Somehow I don't see Hilary and Obama having these sort of honest... not tense meetings.
As much as the commentators say they don't hate each other, not hating is not enough. So what if they don't hate each other, they both have their own egos. They are the two biggest egos in the game right now. And when one ego is trying to protect itself from another it sees as threatening, there is conflict.
I think Hillary will always be wanting to assert herself to Obama. It is natural when faced with someone as charismatic and successful as Obama, (and someone who has beaten you,) to be defensive. But defensive feelings do not make a good working relationship.
Obviously I am not a political thinker, nor do I have much information. It's amazing how I can take so long to make a simple point. Oh well, I need practice expressing myself.
But yay for another female secretary of state.
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It's midnight and I haven't started my reading for tomorrow. DAMNIT.
asdfasdfasd
I have a pain around my eyes because I want to cry.
It is a familiar feeling.
I wish I had a best friend here. Or at the least a television to lose myself in.
I never feel like this when I am at home. I get restless, dissatisfied, angry, even hate myself if I'm being lazy and gaining weight, but this feeling of never being able to settle down, of constantly wanting something, or never being at ease, that I never have at home. I eat dinner, I watch tv with my mom, I take the dog for a walk. I am not searching for something. Here I feel I am constantly being tossed around. From person to person, group to group. Doing what other people want, not knowing what I want.
SOOO, affected by everyone else. "I have to do this, I have to do this" they say. They don't realize how much that affects me. I mean because then I start feeling I have to do things, no, I always feel I have to do things, but when they do say it, the whole thing gets reinforced, and I wonder, what things Should I be doing? The things that they're doing, or the things that I was going to do?
Better to be independent or go along with the flow? And what if the flow is people who are even spacier, more out of it than I am? Tonight was just such a waste of time. Which would not have been a problem except that I am stressed. Underneath it all I am stressed. Why? Because I don't feel in control of my situation. This summer, taking hebrew classes, I knew how much I needed to study, and how much time that would take. So taking time with other people did not make me crazy (too much) because I always knew the small amount of time that I needed. I never doubted my ability to be able to do what I needed to do.
Here, when say I am with this guy, who is taking soo long to do our arabic homework, homework that I already started but he wants to do from the beginning, I go crazy. I want to just get up and leave. But he needs me to do it with him. Aand yet he doesn't realize that I'm humoring him and that he actualy is using me. He just thinks that we are doing our homework together.
We spend two hours doing stuff that I have already done, and then he says he wants to stop, just as we get to the part I haven't done yet.This is so juvenile and stupid. But I had committed to doing it with him, and so I did it. I could have gotten out of it, but really I am too scattered to assert myself. uggh, I'm not explaining this. And it sounds so pathetic I cannot believe I'm writing this.
No, I'm going to explain it. Why do I sit with him while internally freaking out? Why do I walk to the store with this guy when I should have just gone back to my room and started reading? I didn't really want to do either of those things, but I do not trust myself to know what is good for myself. I latch on to people who are more assertive in what they want, because I cannot decide what I want. My emotions and desires are so confused all the time. Do I want to go play soccer? No, but I think it will be good for me. So, should I do it. Or maybe not. Do I want to sit doing arabic with this guy? Yes, I want to do arabic, but not the way he's doing it. I am constantly getting stuck in situations I don't want to be in.
So, maybe I should trust my instincts, my feelings. But my feelings are so often wrong. This is what I'm getting at, or more, that they are misleading. They mislead me. I didn't want to go to soccer tonight. Don't know why. I guess I didn't play so well last week, I had been feeling jumpy all day, and I was tired. Plus I needed to go to the grocery store. When this boy, who NEEDS ME to do his homework because he doesn't have a book, came to my room asking to do the work, and then wasted an hour before starting, and then got going just before soccer started, I decided not to go. I had been looking for an excuse not to go and so I found it. But then I found myself sitting with this boy getting so agitated at him and then wasting even more time walking to a store with his roommate. I should have gone to soccer. I hadn't wanted to go to soccer, but I would have been happier now if I had gone.
No, I didn't have to go to soccer. Maybe it would have turned out well, but not going was not necessarily the wrong choice. The wrong choice was feeling so indebted to this boy. He does things too slowly for me. I can do it on my own. I don't have to prop him up, because I have enough trouble propping myself up.
I need to start putting myself first.
I am really frustrated with this post. I haven't explained anything.
How to make myself feel good, when my head is a mess? Following some people's lead is good for me, I end up doing things that I wouldn't have gotten myself to do on my own. But following other people's leads is not good. I feel I don't really want to be doing it.... oh fuck. I don't know.
If I didn't have this constant feeling of uncertainty around me, I woudn't be so sensitive.
There are some people in this program who really seem to know what they're doing. Are secure, calm, sure of themselves, and others seem to be a mess. Of course I spend all my time with the people who are a mess. But as I write this it occurs to me that maybe the people who are a mess are the more intelligent ones.
Whatever.
It is a familiar feeling.
I wish I had a best friend here. Or at the least a television to lose myself in.
I never feel like this when I am at home. I get restless, dissatisfied, angry, even hate myself if I'm being lazy and gaining weight, but this feeling of never being able to settle down, of constantly wanting something, or never being at ease, that I never have at home. I eat dinner, I watch tv with my mom, I take the dog for a walk. I am not searching for something. Here I feel I am constantly being tossed around. From person to person, group to group. Doing what other people want, not knowing what I want.
SOOO, affected by everyone else. "I have to do this, I have to do this" they say. They don't realize how much that affects me. I mean because then I start feeling I have to do things, no, I always feel I have to do things, but when they do say it, the whole thing gets reinforced, and I wonder, what things Should I be doing? The things that they're doing, or the things that I was going to do?
Better to be independent or go along with the flow? And what if the flow is people who are even spacier, more out of it than I am? Tonight was just such a waste of time. Which would not have been a problem except that I am stressed. Underneath it all I am stressed. Why? Because I don't feel in control of my situation. This summer, taking hebrew classes, I knew how much I needed to study, and how much time that would take. So taking time with other people did not make me crazy (too much) because I always knew the small amount of time that I needed. I never doubted my ability to be able to do what I needed to do.
Here, when say I am with this guy, who is taking soo long to do our arabic homework, homework that I already started but he wants to do from the beginning, I go crazy. I want to just get up and leave. But he needs me to do it with him. Aand yet he doesn't realize that I'm humoring him and that he actualy is using me. He just thinks that we are doing our homework together.
We spend two hours doing stuff that I have already done, and then he says he wants to stop, just as we get to the part I haven't done yet.This is so juvenile and stupid. But I had committed to doing it with him, and so I did it. I could have gotten out of it, but really I am too scattered to assert myself. uggh, I'm not explaining this. And it sounds so pathetic I cannot believe I'm writing this.
No, I'm going to explain it. Why do I sit with him while internally freaking out? Why do I walk to the store with this guy when I should have just gone back to my room and started reading? I didn't really want to do either of those things, but I do not trust myself to know what is good for myself. I latch on to people who are more assertive in what they want, because I cannot decide what I want. My emotions and desires are so confused all the time. Do I want to go play soccer? No, but I think it will be good for me. So, should I do it. Or maybe not. Do I want to sit doing arabic with this guy? Yes, I want to do arabic, but not the way he's doing it. I am constantly getting stuck in situations I don't want to be in.
So, maybe I should trust my instincts, my feelings. But my feelings are so often wrong. This is what I'm getting at, or more, that they are misleading. They mislead me. I didn't want to go to soccer tonight. Don't know why. I guess I didn't play so well last week, I had been feeling jumpy all day, and I was tired. Plus I needed to go to the grocery store. When this boy, who NEEDS ME to do his homework because he doesn't have a book, came to my room asking to do the work, and then wasted an hour before starting, and then got going just before soccer started, I decided not to go. I had been looking for an excuse not to go and so I found it. But then I found myself sitting with this boy getting so agitated at him and then wasting even more time walking to a store with his roommate. I should have gone to soccer. I hadn't wanted to go to soccer, but I would have been happier now if I had gone.
No, I didn't have to go to soccer. Maybe it would have turned out well, but not going was not necessarily the wrong choice. The wrong choice was feeling so indebted to this boy. He does things too slowly for me. I can do it on my own. I don't have to prop him up, because I have enough trouble propping myself up.
I need to start putting myself first.
I am really frustrated with this post. I haven't explained anything.
How to make myself feel good, when my head is a mess? Following some people's lead is good for me, I end up doing things that I wouldn't have gotten myself to do on my own. But following other people's leads is not good. I feel I don't really want to be doing it.... oh fuck. I don't know.
If I didn't have this constant feeling of uncertainty around me, I woudn't be so sensitive.
There are some people in this program who really seem to know what they're doing. Are secure, calm, sure of themselves, and others seem to be a mess. Of course I spend all my time with the people who are a mess. But as I write this it occurs to me that maybe the people who are a mess are the more intelligent ones.
Whatever.
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