:: a.whisper.in.water ::

:: Friday, May 28, 2004 ::

[do you think of me / like i dream of you? ]

I naïvely thought, a while ago, that the impossible task of seeing off loved ones would grow easier, mostly since the formerly-unbearably wrenching task of seeing Jenn off at train stations grew easier over our relationship. However, the most probable cause of that is increased awareness of the reality that she and I would see each other again within a few weeks, perhaps a month at worst: beforehand, our visits came during high school, and consequently could be separated by as much as the better portion of a semester (longest separation = 104 days). At the end of the schoolyear, seeing friends off for summer was also rather impossible, but easily dealt with by the consoling fact that after summer’s passing, they’d be around again.

However, nothing really makes the dull fear of vanishing disappear in the case of a graduating friend. Seeing Jamie off was really quite difficult, but proper. Most other folks I just let slip between my fingers, carelessly, deliberately. I never said a real proper good-bye to most anyone else, with the exception of the girls of 710, and EMJ. You will be missed. On the plus side, Allison’s coming back within a week or so. Speaking candidly, seeing her will be great: she’s a sort of puzzle-piece that really needs to be in place for things to be Good (like most good friends, really), and her happy return will signal its falling back into place.

So, as to the Huge Fucking Disturbance a few weeks ago: misrepresentations, bastardizations, and outright fabrications of what happened seem to be winding their ways around campus, hardly unexpectedly. I’d post what happened from the perspective of the only non-combatant present for the entire altercation, but things haven’t calmed down enough for that not to be inflammatory (fuck LiveJournal), so it may well never happen in a publicly-circulated forum, which is a fucking shame, since it’s as close to the truth as you’ll get.

(Bit of a rant forthcoming, clearly) You’d figure being the only person there, besides the two parties involved would bestow some sort of credibility, but I suppose folks are more interested in hearing what their friends-at-the-moment have to say, rather than what actually happened. Bear in mind that the instant being a “good friend” mandates that you occlude the unfettered truth about the incident in question, you place yourself in dogmatic and intellectually reactionary moral territory. Rough translation: you are lying to yourself, and at best should be ignored wholesale.

I visited my summer apartment-to-be and was chatting with a group of year-old graduates with the naïve intent of possibly (probably not, but possibly maybe) offering to help Jenn Bazydlo move out as a gesture of reconciliation: it’s far easier to let bygones be bygones than it is to harbor insane, idiotic grudges, and frankly, while it’s utterly meaningless what she thinks of me, it’s a giant drama-laden cluster-fucking pain in the ass to not be able to share a space with someone else who frequents it, be they friend or no. I will also concede to being concerned that the apartment would be left in less-than-acceptable conditions (that is: trashed), and would have felt more at ease had I been able to, in some part, oversee her departure. Before I could so much as speak, I got this “you’re not allowed to be here. You need to leave” that, while obviously not unexpected, was still most unpleasant to deal with. The order(s) to leave came in this sickening, crazed tone that clawed for a moral high ground through unambiguously fake politeness. Not quite what I had in mind, given Sash’s telling me that I might have the chance to move in early. Appealing to The Community: a classic sellout move, and nauseatingly enough, it might just work.

In a sick way, I thank Pier for bestowing clarity upon this troubled circle of acquaintances by doing something unambiguously wrong. While a broken heart can inspire any amount of understandable-yet-unreasonable behavior, the (uninspired) lengths she went to in order to exact some grossly-overstated revenge constitute, if nothing else, an event upon which everyone can agree is just beyond any prayer of redemption, despite some of it possibly being construed as a chickens-coming-home-to-roost affair. With that thanks: go home, get your shit sorted out, and come back clean.

Finals are done, mercifully. I didn’t finish 3 problem sets for Advanced Quantum, but their hypothetical impact on my grade at this point is largely negligible. I’m certainly glad I passed (handily): I’ve yet to actually fail a course, despite dancing with the prospect biannually. What an abjectly poor class. Yet another reminder that I do, in fact, suck at life, that my low tolerance for drudgework and less-than-competent instructing persists in preventing me from capably working, not that it needed the help. Ah well. In the end, with the aid of DJ Griffiths, I taught myself enough to make it worthwhile. I’m a fantastically picky worker; I’d better have some sort of amazing job that keeps me constantly engaged and happy, and pays well enough for me not to worry about supporting my family. It shouldn’t be a problem: nobody else ever has any trouble finding jobs like this.

Incidentally, work isn’t going too badly, though I’d be lying if I said it was easy. Walter, in his infinite mercy, granted me a position even after my disastrous stint working for him last summer, though I was moved to a different cluster of projects: Amy’s got my old carbon nanotube project, while I’ve moved over to the Porphyrin Nanorod projects, and consequently, the Chemistry wing. I’d actually really enjoy the chance to explain what I did, but a Friends page simply isn’t the place to do it.

I’m apt to sound (and, by reasonable inference, BE) slightly bitter about the effect of the Friends page, since it becomes my medium of conveyance, regardless of what my blog looks like, or what minute changes I may have made to the template on my LiveJournal main page. This would be okay if I wrote 3-minute brief life-bites on what I’d done with the past two evenings (sat around and played magic, when not being stunned by the party that swept through my apartment without me on Wednesday night) and took meaningless quizzes, rather than the bi-monthly lengthy update, the latter of which is clearly the case. There’s something perversely impersonal about the presentation of the Friends page, as convenient as it seems. Crude analogy: compare visiting a friend in their room to seeing ALL your friends and acquaintances at a noisy, crowded party. Essentially, I’m feeling an external pressure towards appropriate presentation shaping my writing, rather than the events of my life. It’s a balance I can typically walk, but had been straying too far from the unsullied latter.

It’s 3 a.m., and I’m going to sleep. A step in the right direction (away from 4 a.m.), but I hope it’ll be enough to get out of bed tomorrow in time for a decent day’s work before the afternoon showing of (get this) Blade Runner. Socially, work is incredible, and so deserves a full night’s rest on my part. More when I get home and have more time to blog my ass off.

:: Aziz 3:08 AM [+] ::
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