What if I'm beautiful and I'm intelligent, but I'm neurotic as hell and no one will ever be able to truly accept my crazy? What if people can project whatever they want to on me, and they see the awesome girl that they want when in fact I'm just as ugly and frustrating as any other girl on the inside? What if I find myself in my underwear obsessively cleaning my house and trying not to look in the mirrors because I'm suddenly unhappy with my body? What if I lose the best thing in my life because every now and then, inexplicably, I have to really work not to randomly cry? There's a distinct terror in not knowing whether you're normal or not.

Heidi gave me the most brilliant, perfect way to make my senior thesis interesting again. I can't even tell you how much of a weight that is off my mind. It also gives me an opportunity to do something that is somewhat unheard of in arts programs - debut a failed project. Basically what she wants me to do is to use the video I shot in New York in conjunction with the blogs that I wrote on the same days, and if possible, the texts from those days as well. I show essentially how the video failed me, and that for my purposes in my particular time, text was the better medium. While it is in fact undoing a lot of the things that Brian's working to do in his PhD program, it really makes my project not only more interesting to me, but more original in general. It's such the better plan - I'm quite excited now.

Chainsaw noises behind my house again. There are nights when I'm none too comfortable coming home to my little ghetto apartment in crackhead-land.

I think sometimes it's incredibly obvious when I've been splitting up my blogs - when one part was begun one night and the next part was written the next day. Some of this is intensely personal, and sometimes I think I shouldn't post it.

Musings Over a Few Days

Check out this quote by Michel Foucault (my new forced philosopher of choice):

"My problem is essentially the definition of the implicit systems in which we find ourselves prisoners; what I would like to grasp is the system of limits and exclusion which we practice without knowing it; I would like to make the cultural unconscious apparent. Therefore, the more I travel, the more I remove myself from my natural and habitual centers of gravity, the greater the chance of my grasping the foundations I am obliviously standing on. To that extent any trip - not of course in the sense of a sightseeing trip nor even a survey - any movement away from my original frame of reference, is fruitful."

This is an incredible, succinct explanation to why the distance, the chaos of New York was so inspiring for writing. I was everyday forced to examine those ideologies and assumptions that I stand on - that we all stand on, differently - because it was so far removed from my normal, even from the circumstances and situations that *built* my ideologies and assumptions. It's really an incredible quote, and the more I look at it, the more I realize why the inspiration, the wonder that was New York completely faded when I came back here. Honestly, it's bizarre how quickly I fell back into South Carolina. Rapidly, mercilessly, like I hadn't missed a beat. Maybe for a split second my ideologies were challenged by familiar sights after an unfamiliar period of time, but it was incredibly brief. I was already back in my South Carolina mindset by the time I'd spent my first night back.

There's nothing quite as wonderful as having someone to believe in you more than you believe in yourself.

So it's pet peeve time. If this blog were called "Rachel's Pet Peeve of the Day," it would much more easily be a daily post. I know a lot of you love me maybe not for my snark, but at least along with my snark, so here goes: entitled people. Entitled people irritate me to no end. I hope to God that when it's all said and done, people can say that I was at least thankful for all the things I was given. I don't deny that I've been given many things in my life, but I dearly hope that I've expressed my gratefulness for them in most of those cases. Here's the thing, though - don't walk into my coffee shop thinking that my only purpose in this world is to serve you. Don't come in with daddy's credit card, run up a twenty dollar bill, and the conveniently forget to tip. Or even just look up from your cell phone for a second, make eye contact with me, and thank me for the time I've taken to make you that fancy coffee drink that you think you need. Courtesy, people. It's not that difficult. Throw me a bone.

School . . . Future . . . Eww

I find that professors are often the only people smart enough to know when I really think they're stupid. Thus I've never been popular with the professors that I was not impressed with intellectually - Elizabeth Hoffman is a good example (yep, we're naming names). Oddly enough, my fellow students can rarely tell when I think they're absolutely idiotic, but the professors always seem to have a fairly good sense of when I can't stand them. I think many things about me can be falsified, but my eyes don't lie. When I hate you, you know. That's part of the reason why I didn't break the A in my last history class - my TA was, legitimately, an idiot, and she could tell that I knew it. The first day of class she asks, "what can maps tell us?" And I wanted to break out my Benedict Anderson film theory and show her the what-for. She then proceeded to grade all my papers harshly because she didn't like me. Swear to God.

There are days when I feel - intensely - like I'm riding on the coattails of much greater and more talented people. Brian's the obvious example. The next three or four years for me will be both an opportunity to distinguish myself from the excellent company I keep, but also to deserve that company. At the moment, I'm fairly certain I've just stumbled into it. I'd like to earn it. What happens come April will fairly well decide the course of the next few years, and while I'm a little depressed that those glad tidings won't be coming for me, I'm still happy that I have some semblance of a plan. Although that plan reads "follow Brian to _____" at the moment.

I had a short discussion with him about it about a week ago - I told him that it's comforting for me to be able to rest on what he's going to do, in some odd way. If he goes to India, I'm given a circumstance like New York, but more intense and hopefully more inspiring. I don't know if I'll flourish or languish there, but either way I'll have done something intensely new. That's so much pressure to put on him, though. I'm asking him to support me (emotionally, less so monetarily), and be comfortable with the idea of me following him wherever the next few years take him. I hope against all odds that I'll find some way to create my own good luck, but for me, having any semblance of a plan helps.

Senioritis has certainly struck. I'm making it - for the most part - and in fact got my first A on a film paper since taking exclusively Susan Courtney film classes. I was ecstatic, for the record. I'm making better grades this semester than last - at least so far - but I just find myself having to force myself to try a little more than last time. Last semester was my shining beacon, but I guess I've said that more than once.

So that was my school/future bitching session. Expect one on work in the near future. Maybe tomorrow night.

I've started probably ten blogs in the last month - since the last one I wrote? - and ended up dropping all of them. Now that I'm here, my topics are about things and people here. Often Brian, but most of the time I discard those because I think he'd blush over the adoring way I write about him, and I'd probably blush over allowing anyone to know the lovestruck way I think about him. I've started a few about school, but this semester just hasn't been inspiring in any actual scholastic ways. I've thought about writing some about the Film Archive, but most of what inspires me there are the old film reels that I bring home and attach to my walls. I don't know if I should be worried because I'm stagnating, but I think I'm going to try to head that off before it begins. More on that later.

The city that you live in is always bigger than you think it is. More layers, more niches, more places to go that you didn't know existed - partially because, once you're in a place long enough, you forget to really look around you. Everything in life is like that to some extent, I think. You live anywhere, see anything, do anything long enough, and it becomes such second nature that you forget to pay attention to it. I feel like part of living life "fully" (if you'll forgive me using such a cliched term) is learning to periodically delve back into the simple, mundane functions that make up our lives. Part of that, for me, is just walking through a neighborhood that I most often drive through. Walking and driving are so fundamentally different to start with. When you're driving, you're watching traffic patterns and stoplights and thinking about fast ways to get where you're going. When you're walking, even walking with a destination in mind, you see the buildings and notice what's in them and study all the ins and outs of the area around you. Even having to be aware of potentially dangerous situations is intrinsically different from the way you interact with your surroundings in a car. This particularly intrigued me today walking around Brian's neighborhood, noticing how few buildings on Devine I really know the purpose of - there are office buildings, residential areas, and shops on the side of Devine that I had only assumed was . . . actually, I'd never even really considered it. Case in point.

I'm bad about stagnating. I'm sure I've mentioned it before, but I've always had significant problems staying interested in . . . anything, really, without sustained stimulation. I can't say it's exactly intellectual, but there's something that I sometimes find lacking - most especially during the summer - that destroys my ability to function well. Maybe it's senioritis, or maybe this semester really is just lacking in some way, but I need something to yank me out of this weird haze that I'm in. I'm incredibly happy, but after last semester, when I was interested and engaged in school, this semester's a little bit frustrating. I've been presented with what might be an opportunity to break free of that, as long as I have the nerve to go ahead with it. But even so, contacting the person you pretty much worship in order to ask for some kind of mentor relationship is pretty daunting.

Anyway. Let's hope I can keep writing some.

Settling In

Things you do when the parents are on their way:

1. Trash - I mean . . . recycle - the empties.
2. Take out the three trash bags you left on the floor because you didn't feel like wandering into your sketchy back parking lot at 2 AM.
3. Hide any and all evidence of a boy staying over (how many tooth brushes are in the holder?).
4. Make/de-dog-hair-ify the bed.
5. Attempt to clear enough floor space in your tiny apartment so they can walk in the door and set down the boxes they're surely bringing.
6. Turn the Cosmo over/to any page but the "Guy Sex Confessions" article.
7. Leave a few school books lying around - preferably open - to simulate studiousness.

I mean, I realize that they know that I have my own life, but at the same time, we don't have to acknowledge that fact. Everyone's at their happiest when no expectations are being blatantly disappointed.

Sometimes the best things you can do for someone are the small, cheap things that just show you care. Words and grandiose gifts can often only go so far - that small gift of thought is in the end the one that people really long for. I've been on both ends of that equation. I've been given little gifts that so clearly say "I love you" - pasta, necklaces, a rambling 13-minute video about life in a state I left - and also tried to give them. I just hope that I offer back these small gifts of thought as often as they've been given to me. So tonight I dragged dear sweet Greg to the 24-hour BiLo to pick up a chick flick (Wimbledon), ice cream (chocolate chunk), and beer (a 40 of Modelo) as a break-up care package. 10 dollar total, but the two hours spent consuming those items really meant more than anything else I could have said or brought her.

Every now and then I'm still caught off-guard by how much I love film. After three years of analyzing it and picking it apart and studying it, those moments of inspiration come fewer and further between. But every now and then I'll start talking to someone about a movie, and I'll find myself again caught up in that rush of excitement that a brilliant movie can give me. Chatting with my parents tonight, it was one camera movement in Gone Baby Gone and the mirror-bridge sequence in Inception that reminded me of the fact that cinema is such a brilliant medium. It can have a visceral impact in a way that few other media can.

New Stuff

So I think my goal is to make this blog once again a daily affair, or at least something a lot closer to that sense of familiarity. It's different now - you who read it are the same people who will end up being in it, in a lot more cases than it was before - but I feel like it's a good exercise for me to try to put my thoughts down on a regular basis whether or not it's as exotic as my travels to New York were. Once I get internet in my apartment, it'll be an easier business to write regularly. Before I go to bed, after I wake up, whenever I have a minute to steal away. But for now, I'm still settling back in and trying to decide what's necessary and what isn't. It'll take a little longer.

Coming back was strange, but I felt like I approached that jolt really well. I drove back down, which gave me 12 hours to readjust my entire mindset. I think I've said it before, but flying from NYC to SC really creates an odd effect - there's no readjustment time, no quarantine to speak of, so one minute you're in that breakneck speed and you're alone and you're surrounded by thousands of people, and the next you're in the arms of someone you love in the much slower SC pace surrounded by a city that has known you since your birth. There's a sense of shock there that's really hard to put my finger on. But those 12 hours in the car with Brian (I'm going to start using his name now, as part of my SC-blog changes) while I unwound and sweated like crazy (the AC was only on about 20% of the ride home) allowed me the opportunity to say goodbye to that world in a slightly less harsh manner.

I tried to go back and read the first blog post about a week ago. But I started it, and had an instantaneous rush of all those emotions from those first few weeks - despair, terror, and absolutely loneliness - and had to stop. I still have such a visceral reaction remembering what I didn't write while I read what I did write that I couldn't even finish that first post. I say with all seriousness that the only thing that got me through those first few nights was the encouragement that I received from Sarah and Brian. I still have one text saved from Sarah - I won't transcribe it here, but she told me that I was strong and brave and that I could make it through this. And Brian, stopping on his way to some other event, calling me and talking to me for an hour while I let my panic die down little by little. I'll adore you both forever for that.

I know it's ridiculous to say this after two and a half months of hating being in New York, but there is definitely a part of me that misses parts of it. I miss driving out to Coney Island on a rainy day - although those best times were always with Brian - and feeling that strange, old energy wrapped around me. I can definitively say that I miss the buzz the city has. I find myself thinking about when I can go back, even if only for a week, but do it on my own terms and decide whether the city holds quite the kind of sway that I was offered the last few weeks.

Settling back in, only to have school and a new apartment and a new set of obligations thrown at me, has been an interesting experience. One that I'll discuss in more detail later - my new job at the Film Archive has been a really great experience so far, even though it has meant dropping one of my shifts at Cool Beans. Starting back at Cool Beans has been a little funny too, after two months of working for the crazy one with all my strange New York co-workers. My life has completely flipped, for better or for worse, and I find myself fully back in this world with little or no overlap from the previous.

Hours

In some ways, this feels like as much of my last night as the real one will. This is the last time I'll sit in the apartment alone, with my iChat open and my Thievery Corporation up loud. The last night I'll fall asleep alone in that big bed. The next week will feel like more of a vacation than really a wrap-up - in some ways, I feel incredibly unprepared. I wasn't given time to say goodbye, exactly - I was working and waiting, and then suddenly tomorrow, I'll be blissfully unaware that there was ever a city at all. I'm happy about that, but this sudden end of my rhythm is startling.

I had an okay last day. I made good money and I enjoyed working with the people I worked with. It was less bittersweet than last days normally are, mainly because of the hell I put up with from Janice. I came home, did some laundry, cleaned the apartment a bit, and chatted with my landlord about some final terms and whatnot. It's been a good, productive day, one more involved in the preparation for tomorrow than really today. I had a brush with the clean freak in me, and managed to keep her under wraps for at least a little longer - I cleaned that bathroom with a fury that I knew I had, but that had lain dormant for a while in regards to cleaning.

The next week is going to be wonderful. I'll extend that week to include the two or three days right after I get home, when there'll be a flurry of settling and seeing and catching up. I'm incredibly excited about that, as I've mentioned. My emotions do swing wildly between being anxious about going back and being thrilled that I'll be returning to what was such lovely normalcy. Is it awful that I'm nervous about it? Is it more awful that I was offered to opportunity for a summer in New York and didn't fall head over heels for the city?

Yes, StumbleUpon, I like pictures of tiny adorable animals. BITE ME.