December 12, 2008

I have 35 days until I take my CLEP test in English Literature. That means I have designated 35 different subjects to study on each day:

Beowulf | The Pilgrim's Progress | John Milton | John Donne | Christopher Marlowe | William Shakespeare | Samuel Pepys | Alexander Pope | Piers Plowman | 10 Geoffrey Chaucer | Thomas More | King James Bible | Spencer's The Faerie Queene | Jonathon Swift | Henry Fielding | Sir Walter Scott | William Blake | The Romantics | Samuel Taylor Coleridge | 20 Daniel Defoe | Mary Shelley | Jane Austen | Bronte Sisters | George Eliot | Charles Dickens | Thomas Hardy | Joseph Conrad | Oscar Wilde | George Bernard Shaw | 30 Rudyard Kipling | E. M. Forster | James Joyce | George Orwell/Aldous Huxley | Virginia Woolf | Samuel Beckett/Harold Pinter

I've purposely left out some authors, such as Lewis Carroll, whose work I am familiar with. Certain subjects may seen too vast to cover in one day, but those are usually the ones with which I already have a great familiarity, like Shakespeare and Dickens. The goal of each day will be to read historical information on the subject, and as much of the author's major works as I can in one day. To this end, I am warming to the Public Domain content here, it is more than useful in some cases.

I also have 35 days until my CLEP test in Spanish Language. Each day will include reading two chapters of a Spanish textbook, and focusing on the vocabulary and phrases associated with that concept. Each concept will be chosen the day before. Tomorrows concept is Time: Months, days of the week, seasons, time of day, common phrases to express and request time. In this way I can integrate my learning of grammar with a familiarity with certain lexical groupings, which will aid in recall.

I also purchased Love in the Time of Cholera in Spanish, and will read that during certain times of the day, along with my copy of the Selected poems of Borges. My strategy is going to be to employ as many different activities in each day as I can, going back and forth between Spanish and English Literature in thirty minute increments. I might start a day listening to Spanish podcasts, read from a PD text on the internet, practice with Spanish Flash Cards, read literary criticism of the subject, listen to Spanish music, etc. etc. All of this in an attempt to push my point of saturation back, much the same way that a competitive eater pushes back their point of nausea. Also, frequent breaks.

Today, I reviewed counting (Side Rant: Youtube has almost no good videos on counting in Spanish, most of it is videos of people's kids counting in Spanish. Seriously people, who gives a shit?) and conjugations of Ser.

Notes to Myself

• Feminine endings: -a, -dad, -ión, -tad, -tud, -ie, -sis, -ez, -triz, -umbre
• Masculine endings: -e, -ma, most everything else.
• Exceptions apply.
• Plural
  • Ends in vowel + s
  • Ends in consonant + es
  • z becomes -ces
• Body parts, use the definite article.
• Possessive
  • (Noun) de (Owner)
  • La Manzana de Wertperch: (Wertperch's Apple)
• Drop Indefinite Article
  • In expressions with con or sin.
  • Exclamations starting with ¡Que!

I have a new job as a counselor at the Hollow Mountain Winter Camp For Boys. It is like summer camp but with the twist of it happening during the winter. This allows us to raise more capital in lean times for the camping industry. And we are an industry. We don't do much with coal but we are a legitimate industry.

One of the things we don't tell anyone about the camp is that because it is a summer camp we are using in the winter to raise capital for legitimate civil ventures, none of the cabins have heat. We have rigged heat for the cabin that the counselors will sleep in but there will be no heat in the cabins where the kids sleep. Some of them will probably die. It is possible that all of them will. That would cut into our profit margin, but we have cut a bit of a side deal that might insure our investment in a winter camp in the northern mountains with unheated cabins and only one thin blanket per camper and no queer sleepwear allowed. The side deal involves a conservative think tank that wants some video evidence that global warming is not real. If these kids die, we'll be able to use their deaths as evidence that global warming is a farce. The globe is too warm? These kids didn't think so.

I actually hope they won't die. That could weigh heavily on my conscience, especially as I get older and start looking back on my life. There will always be mistakes I'll remember, but mostly I'll focus on how often I've gotten laid by extremely hot men and how gorgeous my thighs were. You can eat popcorn off my thighs and never regret it. I am serious.

I want the camp to be successful and hopefully this won't be a brutal winter. I hope to have unexpected sex with a handsome stranger in a rest stop baby changing station during my trip to Hollow Mountain Winter Camp For Boys.

It is pouring rain. Regardless, I am taking a walk around my college campus; it is a ideal setting in which to think- and smoke.

The semester ends in a few days, and I have resolved to abandon my periodic smoking upon returning home. Were they to learn that I had acquired the habit, my parents would be disappointed. So would my friends, most of whom still attend my own high school--some even middle school. I picked up the vice enveloped in a downcast mindset. For most of my teenage years, I have been idealising a young death regardless.

Tonight, life seems a bit more worthwhile. There is certainly content to be found in living; one that exists in a permanent state. This content is permenant. It is not only hiatuses, which divide recurring bouts of depression.

How to find this content? Instances of it can be found occasionally, in sublime moments of humanism, creative immersion, and introspection. Such ephemeral spells turn up when consoling a lover, benefiting a stranger, writing a melody, and meditating to achieve self realisation. But all things pass.

I suspected that the source of circumventing psychological burdens was subconscious. Revealing the cause of insecurity and irritation might be the result of careful excavation of personal history. And so, I took to studying society, psychology, and even mysticism and spirituality.

But none of these fields are cure-alls. Mine is a personal pursuit, and it must remain that way. Perhaps, some day, I will understand others through my self-awareness.

just feel too much lately. i know it's too much because i run out of any place for it all to go and it spills out in peculiar ways. peculiar places.

i don't feel like anyone else cares at all and i know it's just because no one should care as much as i seem to currently. it's too hard on a person. it just seems to eat up all of my energy and mental resources. i have this feeling in my stomach like unsettled nervous energy is collecting there for some reason. why always in the stomach? it's this particular physical symptom that bothers me the most.

i feel this urge to be around people as i'm sure this would help me to forget that i am a mess. on the other hand, it is very difficult to be around anyone at all because it seems such an effort to push it all down. or at least an effort to present as a normal functioning human being. less than a month ago, i could breathe. less than a month ago, i could cope.

the doctor couldn't find my blood pressure today, it took a really long time and then she said it seemed so faint. i found that mildly amusing because i feel like i am less than a whole person when i am this way. like i am a sort of shell creature. head is full of a bunch of unorganized emotion and thought that amounts to very little substance in the end.

i want to be able to handle this more appropriately. (whatever that means) i also want to be able to explain myself without sounding insane. i feel wholly incapable of accomplishing anything in the way of meaningful progress.

so, we meet again. can't get away from yourself, in the end. it makes me feel as though i should come with some sort of disclaimer. or at the very least, an apologetic note.