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I think I might have discovered why undergraduate students write their thesis in their final semester. It is excellent training for the kind of work our society seems to keep doling out more and more of. This is computer-oriented work. I have been doing some brief job searching lately and have noted a common trend that runs throughout all of my search inquiry results. People are looking for other people who know about computers: how to work them, manipulate them, create them, etc. This is unfortunate for me because, although my mother thinks that I have a definite proficiency in making computers do what I want them to do, in reality, somehow I have fallen behind the times; there are thirteen-year-olds that know more than I do. But, to return to my original description…I am tired. My eyes are getting to the point where they need massaging, my room seems to close in on me, shrinking smaller and smaller around me and my laptop, and the many windows that I have opened up on the screen are failing to maintain my interest. This is the point in my night where I need a break. I never thought that after finally getting a single room to myself—no roommate to start talking to me before a philosophical breakthrough, no roommate to bring in other people to distract me from my work, no roommate to use as justification for my procrastination—that I would find myself going to a common area of my house (putting myself in harms way of 63 other breathing organisms) to “study”. Conclusion: here is only so much staring at a computer that I can take. Yet, so much of what I need to be doing seems to demand me paying attention to my demanding laptop. Even this “break” from thesis work that I am taking now involves typing on a screen. I have take break from one activity to do another but the medium has remained the same. If I were to compare my working from home to those who work in an actual work place, me leaving my thesis work to write this blog entry would be like getting up from your desk to go home but realizing that you actually live at your office. You don’t get a break—your environment stays the same. The screen still glows in front of you. But, luckily!, you can transport your screen with you wherever and whenever you want. Ah, the perks of being a college student. When I answer a craigslist ad and get the position and find myself glued to some form of a computer forty hours (probably more) a week then I will yearn for the days where I was able to at least fool myself into believing I have achieved some semblance of an environmental change. I can bring my screen to a coffee shop, to the park, the airport, my bed, class, the middle of union square etc. etc. The options are limitless!! Hah, so although my thesis work (that demands the use of the computer) is training me to learn to live in a screen, I have not been forced to fully give myself over yet. Why, just yesterday I found myself lying in the sun reading a (gasp!) book. I even moved my limbs around today kicking a soccer ball around a small field with other real live human beings. (it is fun, you should try it).
I always thought that the fact that so many psychologists have nervous breakdowns was ironic. Yet, I find myself in a comparable position in that I am studying my own neurosis in order to cure myself, to find a viable solution. I am writing my thesis on post-modern fragmentation: the loss of community, the loss of meaning and the loss of an understanding of what it means to live the “good life”. I recently stumbled upon some interesting ideas that reminded me that I can become passionate about ideas and the potential reality that they hold. Certain philosophers and moral theorists have highlighted my own inability to decide what the right life is to live, the right values to hold, what I should do with myself in a way that I hadn’t processed before. So, maybe if I can synthesize these ideas in a way that makes sense to me, I can make sense of myself. That is the idea (unconsciously prompted and recently brought to consciousness) I suppose. I am going to assess whether or not virtual communities and the connections we make with people online are going to be an acceptable solution to the problem of 21st fragmentation. And I presume that I will posit some sort of dystopia for the reader to chew on for a while: envisioning a world like E. M. Forster’s in his “The Machine Stops” (written in the 20s he was able to paint a world where no one interacted directly with each other or the Earth itself but communicated through screens, living in their self-contained world). I think that, ultimately, I will argue that there is no right answer here. Virtual communities will work for some people and won’t for others. This seems to take for granted the idea that informational society will never really stabilize. The use of the internet is a multi-faceted impetus that can’t work the same way across the board (within a certain culture, population within a culture, gender, ethnicity, age group…). People are turning to online communities because there has been the dissolution of physical, tangible ones and this, in turn, has a snowballing effect where more and more communications online only lead to more. Others see their friends and family getting into them and this also pushes for online community support and propagation. People are looking for connection because what we have right now is not working. For some people this will connect them or lead them to feelings of being more connected to others; for others it will disconnect them, making them feeling more alienated than ever before (Marxian “alienation” amplified to an extreme). Ultimately, the internet needs to be judged as a vehicle for enabling such a new community to develop that would solve the fragmentation of the post-modern period. It might just make our lives even more fragmented. What would an online community look like that had members who all knew how to live the “good life” based on a set of agreeable moral principles for them to follow that the community had laid out for them? Is this possible on the internet? If it is possible, does the internet lend itself to these types of communities or are they rare and hard to come by? Is there actually more and more social interaction happening online? If so, what would a world with all social interaction online look like and what would be its downfalls? What new era are we approaching (meaning, what exactly does “the information age” really come down to for interpersonal relationships and human morality)? Is this a force that we have no control over or can it be harnessed (is it going to do its own thing unchecked by government laws and formal regulations?). Can we even envision a world that would come after this?
This is the closest answer I can presently give to people when they ask “what is your thesis going to be about?” When it comes to the answers to these questions and the way that I will eventually write about them…your guess is as good as mine. All I know is that I feel like I am doing things all backwards right now. I am getting sources and having to write an introduction for my pre-thesis writing class that is unfolding before me only one step at a time. How am I supposed to hand in the conclusions when I barely have the baby steps? Sometimes the bureaucratic aspects to formal education perplex me. So, instead, I will go wander down four stories to my kitchen where I can eat Sunday “snack” with all the other kids who are taking a break from their screens and their backwardness.

pulled pork and golf balls

Brette, Casey and I waiting to be seated at "porky's" (the entrance doors were guarded by two large pig statues- not very good advertising if you ask me)

Why do the responsible ones always get rained on? I advised my friends earlier that walking on a driving range wasn't a good idea because it really hurts to get hit by a golf ball. Later that night i went to bed early, only managing to drift in and out of sleep because I was worried about them not being able to get in. When I finally heard them creep in, I was startled when Brette got on top of my bed when hers was clearly just a few feet away. I don't know why but I knew immediately when they started hitting me that I was being bombed by golf balls. 30 something golf balls pegged me at 2:30 in the morning from the trajectory point of Brette's shirt. Casey so kindly photographed the entire event. And all I could do was laugh and brush the golf balls out of my bed to finally get some sleep. Lesson of the evening: don't go to bed early. Don't live near golf courses either.

The biggest contradiction I have ever eaten: a pulled pork salad. By the time I finished off the delicious meat I could barely muster the leaves. Good thing we had such big spoons for the occasion. I don't know why I ever thought I could be a vegetarian...

San Diego Laze

The inside of Casey Madden's recently remodeled abode where us girls proceeded to talk, lounge and dance and there might have been some brownie eating in there as well...

life is full of contradictions:)

Elisa and I help her french cousins discover the joys of self-serve frozen yogurt

This night out was my first and last night out downtown. This night we learned that you can read classics and watch speed racer while being served beer by the Joker, Poison Ivy and Wolverine (comic convention going on in San Diego means lots of cheap "comic-kazes"). Wonder if all nights out necessitate a similar degree of randomness.

My time in San Diego is dwindling. Yet these next few days stretch on and on and taunt me. They allow me the idle time to do things like make zucchini bread, tan on my deck, go grocery shopping an unnecessary amount of times, to avoid looking for jobs and to remind me to post what limited and random pictures I have to remember this month in San Diego by.

Yesterday I went to the gym twice and I went to the same shopping mall twice (to be fair I did yoga in the morning and my mom's step class at night and I went to the mall first to get my dad's birthday present and second to go have the dinner that he suggested we have). We were walking into Rubios (fish taco haven, for those of you who don't know) and I asked my dad if he had ever lived in a city before, an actual urban environment. The closest he had come was the suburbs of L.A. I told him that I didn't know how long I could live in the suburbs for, trying to demonstrate how they suck the life force out of me. Have you ever stepped back and seen how desolate and empty the stripmalls that frame our plots of houses really are? It's bad. He replied calmly (as he always manages to do) "Melissa, the world is just very small right now". "What do you mean?" I inquired further into his blanket statement. I didn't know if he was talking about something beyond me, globalization and our "flattening world". But, after clarification, he just meant my world.

I guess it is about to get a bit bigger. And I think I am ready.

The downfall of 5EXZ844

Today they took you away.

A big man in a big truck pulled up and that is when I left the scene. I came inside wondering: Why does Father Joe need my teenage memories? Why did I allow this to happen? 5EXZ844, I hope you will be alright. I can’t imagine who will use you next and what adventures you might go on but I hope that they are good ones. I treated you alright, right? I know I only washed you maybe six times in the two years I had you and I know that I didn’t fix your cd player and I know that I let you see some obscene things and there was that time where I ran you into the only pole in the parking lot…yeah. But we had good times too—we drove to so many beats back and forth from my parking spot to destinations near and far. I never got you pulled over and I never totaled you. My friends painted you a few times and others scribbled words and symbols into your dust. I took you to L.A. and never pushed you further. But you were old, you couldn’t take it and so you let yourself fall apart. And am I to blame? I was out exploring the wonders and downfalls of public transportation. I couldn’t have known! Don’t be too hard on me and don’t be too hard on yourself. We had a beautiful relationship while it lasted. You gave me freedom and I guess I, in turn, gave you your freedom. You were my ticket out and for that I am forever grateful to you. I will always consider my decision to get you, with your self-heating seats and wooden interior, over any new cheap Japanese little hot rod. Yes, you served me well and no other can ever change the things you did for me. You did good kid. Real good.

Palm Springs: True Story

The forlorn buses gazed out beyond their enclosure at the miles of brown and dust before them. Each manned their position at the edge of the fence to protect their home but also seeking to escape from it. To see these buses is something like observing a child who has come back to the home where they were raised. They defend it as their stomping ground and the space that lent them their life but they will readily flee it to look for greener pastures.
The unforgiving sun reflected off their dirty hides of metal and glared into my eyes as I let them wander out the car window. Only a piece of glass was protecting my degree of comfort as the conditioned air dried my sweat. But the buses were done. They had been given up to the heat to roast, the flies within them to burn. At least cattle remain unaware of their fate—they graze leisurely and concern themselves with everyday issues. Perhaps buses can still manage to hope; to hope that they will be driven away from this hell hole. But in the back of each of their minds they know what is to become of them. The eroded will to live and the certainly of impending death only makes them decompose faster.
Tall metal ladders with branches of more metal, more machinery, struck up from the ground, eager sunflowers, and reached towards the sky. Aliens lurked in their thin shadows and it became hard to tell which seemed more out of place: the faded green shrubs at the base of these towers or the beasts themselves. To place your hand on one of the desert’s manufactured pillars, to try to climb to the top to stretch your vision as far as the mountains allow, is to ensure certain suffering. Only the alien’s can survive here. You are a mere figment of the past—a past climate and dying breed that only play with the suffocation to feel more alive. Towers taunt you but do not think you can tame them.

The car thermometer read 109 degrees.

I fidgeted in my seat and wiped the sweat from where my leather purse lay on my bare legs. I needed sleep. The heat serenades you into a lethargy that few can resist. It creeps up behind you and eventually surrounds you causing any move you make to only plunge you further into it. But the sight of the scarce plants and the contrasting textures was too much to not take in. So, I kept my eyes open. My realization that I live in a desert, that this was an extreme desert but the place we were going was still just a desert, came in waves and I batted thoughts of moist jungles, cold plains of green, out of my head.
I held my eyes open and it occurred to me that we were driving through a body. Each hill became an organ and I was a small cell just passing through. There were arteries and passageways between the mountainous hills sustaining life but the organs dictated our movement through the desert’s body. The heart was what preoccupied me the most. I thought of my own red, vein stricken heart and imagined it coated in desert. There were small jack rabbits that bounced between skeleton trees and small birds could be seen to fly from one small patch of shade to another. My heart beat was slow and the pulse—lub dub luuubb duubb—was crusty. I think my thoughts dried up at that point as well. I wondered if the girl’s sitting next to me had hearts of tropical rain forests, maybe just blocks of ice. It was a silent ride and my head was saturated with poems and strings of words but they just rested there, no energy to move, and my lips stayed closed.
Once I thought I saw a tree. It was taller than all the other shrubs and appeared healthier as well. I blinked some moisture back into my contacts back and the tree transformed before my eyes. What had once been a source of life, one of mother nature’s finest, was now no realer than a plastic Christmas tree on sale for 40% off at Walmart. It had no roots and the pathways where water would have traveled upwards and out were just metal. A deceitful tower, it shrouded itself to make a mockery of vitality. A robotic tree with no idea of what it was like to be a genuine plant. It didn’t sway in the wind with the spinning turbines and it would never grow or shrink or shrivel up or provide. As it passed I swear an alien popped its head out from behind the tower’s trunk and smiled an empty smile at me. The other trees hung about dispassionately.
But not everything that we humans touched turned to silver. Some coated the land, the sleeping Earth, in a patchwork quilt. The farmer’s big homes and plots cloaked the ground creating a beautiful pattern of organized squares to emerge for the circling hawks to admire from above. I think that the farmers braved the heat just to prove they could. These stubborn soles clung to the desert, refused to leave and would die there someday after sipping strawberry lemonade. It would seem like the brown hills would have slept better with this comfort and could lie their, motionless, in thanks but they just remained apathetic. Dry, cracked skin does not seek warmth. The land can only be indifferent to the farmer’s internal affairs and sufferings; it cannot shake them or rebuke them but it can try them. They say that misery loves company. And I hold that there is nothing more miserable than the spirit of the desert.
So, we flew through it’s dried up canals and fled to cooler air. Chasing the sun dial that never seemed to move from noon. I took a sip of my water and rubbed the small goose bumps that were forming on my arms as I wished for a different song to come on. My mind’s eye returned to the artificial climate we were managing to sustain and my heart began to beat faster. Our car admitted it was not strong enough for the desert. Still, we would not let ourselves be overtaken by the shrewd heat, scared by alien landscapes.

Shanghai II

a woman creates a tribute to those lost in the Chengdu earthquake

Christoph helps me fill out my forms to get a new visa. Oh bureaucracy...

city scape

THE best dumplings we ever encountered in China. Buttery and crisp but still soft and oh so cheap. I feel like going back to Shanghai just for these jewels

Respite from the bustle

Shanghai

The famous dumpling place where we waited a half hour to get our serving (and where the infamous 'dumpling dance' was born)
one shot of the large skyscrapers (reminiscent of Hong Kong) that lined People's Square

Our "peking duck" that we didn't manage to get in Beijing but settled for it in Shanghai

yes this was staged but don't we look like we were meant to be having tea in this quaint garden?

testing the coy... but with no results

Checking out the Bund

the old town of Shanghai (interestingly blended with the new)

Xian II

one of many calligraphers that dotted our paper and brush lined street

our encounter with what some people call a "wonder of the world"- the terra cotta warriors
emma and erin do some yoga and get their feet wet near the great goose pagoda

the actual pagoda, complete with incense lighters and cute little boys

a third bunk view of our train to Shanghai- you really pay more for the lower seats for a reason (chinese trains are full of rules...what kind of train closes their restaurant car at 8?)

Xian I

our lovely hostel in Xian (where we got in room massages! this was before my wallet was stolen...)

christoph, emma and erin observe the mosque inside the muslim quarter of the city (a nice change from temples)

Men congregate to play cards (and gamble I am sure) You will not see any women in these parts of the parks

when you order food at a place where there is an obvious language barrier, there is a lot of pointing and, in our case, pictionary (Christoph managed to get us eggplant, rice and meat skewers with his drawing skills)

who says the chinese can't drink?

Beijing (part 3)

dusk on a lake

portraits of people

erin works out the chinese way
fresh pork and vegetable buns (a whole steamer of those cost less than a dollar)

Erin sits with the map (I admit I did very little of the navigation on this trip) a glass plate separating us and our cab driver

The Great Wall

ski lift up
wearing Erin's bday present to me: a jade necklace. And what better place to wear it then when sitting in a window on the Great Wall of China?

Vanessa, Erin and I look happy but this must have been after a rest because, with the heat and the oscillation between stairs that were too spread apart adn those that were too close, we were exhausted

eerie scene inside one of the towers of the wall

toboggoning down (of course!)

Beijing (part 2)

one of the cleanest squatting tiolets I have ever been priveleged enough to become acquainted with

summer palace design (this actually stood out from the rest of the similarly themed decoration and color schemes of the palace)

one of the many tourists groups who decidedly matched

a tree that seem like it would only exist in a movie

an early supporter of his country, this little one stands outside the gates to the forbidden palace (nicelt framed by Mao's face)

Beijing (part 1)

the theatre scorpions, bugs and crawly things for the eatin'

street sweet potato outside the summer palace

erin buys one of the many experimental red bean bun attempts with high hopes

me, erin, brianna, umm...., vanessa

Erin's friend Brianna took us out a few nights and her and her friends enlightened us to what studying Putongwah (mandarin) really entails.