Current to do list
- decorate travel journal for blog, cause i'm not going to update until the end of the day when i get to Hampshire. with my faulty memory, having paper in hand is essential.
- buy decorative shit for my dorm room. i wanted to buy some posters, but i'm thinking about just having some of my best photos blown up by adorama.com. They do some of the best re-imagining that I've seen so far, plus its pretty inexpensive.
- spend as many days with my tricycle as possible. its an arm, a leg, and a blind man's kidney to ship anything to Amherst.
- throw a birthday party for me and Anna G, provided she gives me a bloody date for the shin dig.
- survive my family's birthday/graduation party with what's left of my sanity still in tact.
- take care of tedium like getting my hair redone, finish packing, saying good riddens to people i'm not inclined to keep in touch with.
There's a purple yoga mat sitting atop three packed boxes. The boxes contain the basic building blocks for my survival in Massachusetts; school supplies, beauty aids, vitamins, and clothing that won't fit in my suitcase for the plane. I've got to pack my linen, books, and textbooks that serve as study aids for classes i want to continue in college tomorrow.
I've still yet to decide what 100-200 books i want to take with me, because sadly i can't get a good nights sleep if I'm not within reachable distance of books.
Does that signify my total surrender into nerd-dom? the inability to sleep if i don't have books about queer theory, indie fiction, paganism/new age, buddhism, and any other subject that sits on the three bookshelves surrounding my king size bed?
Yeah.....it does.
On a different note, i had a very interesting convo with Melanie today. amongst our usual vegan/vegetarian ramblings, we started talking about race at Hampshire. We were talking about how things seem so segregated, mostly the pent up angst of a lot of the students of color. She told me how she went to the multi-cultural students weekend in October, and during the town meeting she felt like they were kinda bad mouthing white people. I told her i experienced something similar, where people expressed a lot of sentiments it seemed like they didn't actively admit to beyond the confines of the meeting place's walls.
I can totally understand a lot of their frustrations. There have been lots of moments in class where I have had to hold my tongue when people say something completely off color, simply because I didn't want to explain to Dean Bumbry why i made somebody cry in trying to explain to them how they are misguided about things.
However, I guess I'm just a different kind of person. I don't have a problem telling my white friends that I don't care for people pretending like they understand the black struggle, because that makes our struggle seem horribly homogeneous. It would be like me saying "oh yeah, i understand the Irish struggle. going without potatoes for a long period of time must be an all mighty bitch!!! but hey, we have french fries now! so no worries!"
yeah....i can only imagine what kind of idiot you would have to be to not only say something like that, but think its acceptable conversation.
I also don't have a problem telling people a lot of my decisions about lifestyle choices are based around socio-economic principles. I choose not to do drugs, because unlike the white kids in evanston, i wouldn't get a slap on the rist and a round trip to some ritzy rehab center. my ass would get sent to jail! in my mind, thats a horribly stupid reason to get sent to jail, for smoking a hallucinogenic plant or for chasing dragons and other lizards of the figment-ed heroin addicts imagination.
I think in order to survive in life, you have to be able to speak up, and do so in a way which not only emphasizes a point, but the point sticks. Its like i was telling Melanie, who was concerned about rich white kids trying to sound like the epitome of knowledge.
"i have no problem telling people that going to a private school and living an affluent lifestyle doesn't guarantee intelligence. in fact, the majority of you floating around like albert einstein only think you're smart is because people have been telling you all your life that you are. Now i want you to think really hard, and realize the majority of the people who placate your ego probably look like you. Notice how my skin doesn't resemble yours in color, so realize right now I'm not one of them, never have been, never will be!"
in other words, i have no issues making people who i really don't care about cry or feel bad about the ignorant things they say. unlike some people who resort to common and extremely petty insults, i prefer to resort to British wit and a higher degree of vernacular.
anyways......after our conversation, i walked away feeling a little better that i had reassured some of her fears, but sad at the same time. she was telling me how she didn't want to sign up for african Americans studies classes because they were filled with mostly white people who, once again, claim they know everything. its a shame when someone is discouraged in taking classes because of the kind of people who may be in them. it reminds me of the many conversations i have with my mom about her living through the civil rights movement. she told me how the 60s spawned a lot of irreversible mistakes in terms of civil rights, like affirmative action, but she was happy that African American studies was being offered so more people could have an academic understanding of history. but it just makes me question how effective these classes are if
a. people of color aren't taking them because they share some of melanie's fears
and
b. teachers aren't calling students out on their shit. are they really helping students of both color and non-color understand a different historical/sociological perspective if people walk out with the same ignorances they entered the class with?
i guess that's something i'm going to address in my african american literature class this year. i know i stayed pretty quiet in high school, out of fear of suspension for verbally assaulting someone. college, however, is going to unleash a whole new can of scorpions.
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