To burn with desire and keep quiet about it is the greatest punishment we can bring on ourselves.

--Federico Garcia Lorca, Blood Wedding and Yerma

(via come correct)

I now want a house just so I can do this in my backyard:

Reblogged from Square Dancing with Giants

The most succinct word in the world

according to the Guinness Book of World Records, at least. I think I'm going to agree. 

Reblogged from 18° 15' N, 77° 30' W

 

I don't do casual well.

Let's talk about short-term/casual dating. What exactly is it? How does it work? Is there a difference between say, dating exclusively and being in a relationship? What level of emotional investment should be placed in it? It inherently contains a lack of commitment, right, so does that mean it's okay to be sort of ambivalent about it from the start? Is it, objectively, a good idea or a bad idea? Is it anything other than pointless to date someone who you know you don't want around for very long, who is cute and sweet and fun but not your "type"? [Is cute and sweet and fun and interested in me not enough of a type? Is that a good thing or a bad thing?] Is any relationship social interaction ever really entirely pointless?

The sitch: So there's this guy I've been talking to. We exchanged a few messages, then numbers, which led to these awesome really long text convos we've been having for the past few days. We've been talking about doing things like going on actual dates and cooking for each other. He's decently attractive, taller than me, sweet, cutesy in the way I'm trying to never get caught up in again, into learning even if he didn't go to a great school, and he is easy to talk to. I enjoy having conversations with him and he makes me smile. Oh, and he is arguably very very interested in me--texts everyday and has expressed his desire to "pursue this further" multiple times. 

Doesn't sound like a bad situation to be in, right? So why am I so hesitant? 

When I was telling K about this guy on Monday, I was halfway through my description when he interrupted me and said, "Maya, he is not the one for you." I gave him this look like, Well duh and said, "Yeah I know, but...". He thought that was hilarious, that I was fully aware of that fact but still trying to meet this man for a date on Saturday. And ever since then, either inspired by or unsilenced by this exchange with K, a part of me has been wondering what the fuck I'm doing with this. Am I wasting my time? Or am I arguably just having fun? 

I wasn't looking for any kind of "further-going" when I started this. It's flattering but... how much of this is me liking him and how much is me liking the attention? I am deathly afraid of liking being liked more than liking the person doing the liking. He is not by any standards my "type", though some would argue have argued that the standards one must meet to be my type are too elitist-ly high. I feel like it would be really easy to get into a dating-->dating exclusively-->somewhat like a relationship type thing with him...I just don't actually feel like this is something I necessarily WANT. I don't necessarily strongly NOT want it either. I'm kind of ambivalent. But this is not the place for ambivalence. (Is there ever a place for ambivalence?) As I know all too well, people's emotions and interests and affections and desires are NOT TO BE TRIFLED WITH. I don't wanna be triflin'.

I like this. It's fun. I'm enjoying everything that is happening right here and now. Maybe I should for once in my life make an active attempt to stop worrying so much about silly projections I'm making that may or may not have any relation to my life's actual events. Maybe I should "go with the flow". But going with the flow is what recently got me and someone who was once near and dear to my heart into so much trouble. As a result, going with the flow kind of frightens me right now; going with the flow can get people hurt. But only if you go with it past your comfort zone, right? Only if you go with it to places you know you shouldn't/don't want to be? So as long as I don't MIND what's happening, as long as it's putting a smile on my face, can I just chug along? What about the fact that he seems to WANT this so much more than I do? Am I being fair?

Maybe in light of recent events or maybe just in light of being who I am, I am not sure that enjoying something is a justifiable justification for doing it. But why not? Why can't the fact that i think i would enjoy something be reason enough to do it? Girls just wanna have fun. WHAT ARE THESE STUPID MORALS AND WHERE ARE THEY COMING FROM?!  What separates doing something like this from doing something like my I-suppose-you-must-call-it-a-relationship with J? (A few thoughts: I was using J mostly for physical attention, whereas this guy is entirely emotional crack [for now, at least]; I established an end-date for J before we started, whereas I just have the feeling that this won't last; this guy is 1000 times closer to my "type".)

I have an overwhelming desire to want to do things the right way. I don't believe that all is fair in love and war. I do believe that I could enjoy spending time with this man as much as I enjoy conversing with him, which is a good amount. I do believe in the value of reciprocity and in living my life with integrity, which includes being unselfish in my interpersonal relationships. I don't believe I'm giving as much as I'm getting right now. 

...Then again, we haven't met. Case in point: when I told F I was thinking about ending things with this guy, he replied that things haven't even started. So I guess I'll text him when I get off work. And I guess maybe we'll have ourselves an actual date at some point. And I guess I can make up my mind then? It can't be fair to shut the door in his face when he's only halfway inside, I suppose. I suppose I'll just have to make it very clear that, as excited as he may be, I'm just seeing what this feels like. I suppose I am learning to take chances.             

On the Road Back to a Scholarly Attitude

The conversation addressed in the previous post helped remind me why the work I want to do is important. This quote just posted by a friend on Facebook makes me want to get to it. 

My Life has...Purpose?

So a few of the research opportunities to which I'm applying call for Statements of Purpose as part of their applications. When I learned that I started freaking out, like I'm 20 years old (for a few more hours), I'm just a student who wants to keep being a student--you want my life to fit together into some sort of a cohesive narrative about why grad school is right for me and I don't think that's going to happen yet (ever?). I was scared I was going to have to bullshit the whole thing and I wasn't going to get in because this was going to be a piece of crap, and I was scared of how I was going to un-piece-of-crap-ify it by the time legit applications roll around. 

And then I started writing, and shocked myself. It...works. I didn't have to BS any of it, because once I got going, I realized there were signs and there are reasons why I want to do what I want to do and as much as I wouldn't have believed it a few days ago, there is a purpose to all of this. I've never thought about my life as something purposeful before. It's...interesting, to say the least. I won't call it fate, I might call it destiny, because I think it's more than coincidence....It's weird how we're writing stories that have follow-able plots without even being aware that we're holding pens. I always say that I want to be a professor because really, what else would I do? Nothing hopefully seems a lot more obvious after you read this:

Then entirely confident in my future as an English major, I enrolled in my first Sociology course on a whim, but quickly became enamored with the discipline and the change in perspective developing a “sociological imagination” entailed. A particularly interesting reading in that first class inspired me to take Families later, and in retrospect, I think I knew that introduction to the field had changed my life plan even before I enrolled in Inequality: Class, Race, and Gender instead of the last prerequisite to declare English. That course, in addition to introducing me to the truly interdisciplinary nature of Sociology, presented me with my first experience with original sociological research, in the form of a group project surrounding social stratification found in the most common fields Princetonians enter after graduation. From the earliest stages of that project, it became clear that I devoted myself more entirely to the research than my fellow group members, printing piles of articles and enjoying the process of enveloping myself in the structural faults of the nonprofit sector—my English-heavy close-reading background translated into research suiting me well. Recognizing this love for research prompted me to realize that my friend’s half-joke that she could see me as a professor held some weight; a tutor throughout middle- and high schools, and the friend who is ever-ready to enlighten others with some nugget of knowledge, teaching comes naturally to me, and despite having always been an avid writer, I had very recently realized that writing scholarly works might come just as naturally. These combined realizations led me to apply for, and thankfully be awarded, recognition as a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow, a feat which I hope, like this research opportunity, will enhance my chances of acceptance into a prestigious PhD program in Sociology.

Though my group didn’t have full freedom to choose a research topic for that assignment in Inequality: Class, Race, and Gender, the choices presented to us demonstrated something integral to my love of sociological research—the ease with which a topic of general interest to me could become an academic project.  From that point on, whenever I read an article or had a discussion with a friend about some social issue, I began to wonder how I could study it and come to some sort of informed conclusion; my junior independent work this year grew out of the same process. Almost since enrolling in college, my friends at other institutions and I had often debated the benefits of going to our respective schools over others, and after reading an article in the New York Times about college’s effect on students, I realized that I could turn this debate into a substantive research endeavor. Under the guidance of a graduate student, Alex Davis, and my advisor Professor Rebekah Massengill, I developed an interesting research question and constructed a thorough questionnaire and extensive list of variables on which to compare institutions; this pair has proven instrumental to my research as I can further develop ideas through conversations with them, as well as approach them with questions about survey design, data collection, or even use of STATA for data analysis. At different stages in my research process, each of these mentors jokingly informed me that I was working too hard for a junior project, reflecting again the fact that I take naturally to research and truly enjoy it more than most.

Befriending and having intellectual discussions with persons from a wide range of racial, economic, cultural, religious, national, and regional origins throughout my time at Princeton has engaged me academically with the often-overlooked intricacies of identity politics. Additionally, my current research topic has shown me that, at this stage of life at least, higher education and the changes to individual identity it prompts fascinate me—I hope to study another aspect of this topic in my Senior Thesis next year. The Sociology courses I have taken so far, in conjunction with my overall college experiences and the people I have come to know during my time here, have inspired me to seek to understand the gray areas of social life and society, most clearly in the areas of individual identity, both in terms of culturally significant identities that are not traditionally studied (such as identifying as an adult), and the complications that can arise from various conflicts and convergences amongst traditional identity markers. In my current research project, in which I ask whether one type of institution better facilitates its students’ transitions to adulthood than does another, I hope to broaden the expanse of knowledge regarding the effects of higher education on young Americans by drawing attention to and filling an overlooked gap in the literature, effectively demonstrating that “higher education” as a topic of study contains its own gray areas and points of heterogeneity that warrant further study. I plan to continue to conduct research in this manner in the future, by delving deep enough into areas of interest to me that I find yet-unexplored layers to be probed and analyzed. As truly strange as my friends and classmates may find this, I find exhilaration in being surrounded by books and articles, reading and highlighting, trying to find my way to a research question—in the simplest of terms, I love research, and would relish the chance to make a career of it. A winding road comprised of specific courses, professors, and graduate students led me to pursue a degree—and hopefully, a career—in Sociology; without these individuals and their work, I may have gone on to criticize contemporary novels and lived blissfully unaware of the ways in which I could add to the knowledge of the world, and I cannot bypass the opportunity to affect others in the same way by continuing on to graduate school and, eventually, professorship. A multi-tasker by nature, I aspire towards a dual career in professorship and administration, so that I may ensure the incorporation of diverse ideas and teachings into curricula and academic atmospheres.

Next step(s) in my continual quest for self-improvement: I miss art. I don't even remember how we started talking about this the other night during a half-(meaning only me)-drunken cuddlefest the other night, but B and I were discussing the fact that I used to be really into pottery when I was in middle school. I have this bowl that went on a statewide art tour to a bunch of different colleges, and there's an etched plaque I made of a tree supposedly on permanent display in my middle school. I got to go on this cool field trip to this place in Millville called the Clay College (which I just realized still exists and now I want to go back but I vaguely remember it being prohibitively expensive. But you know what ISN'T prohibitively expensive? What is, in fact, FREE? The Ceramics Studio on campus. I've always talked about wanting to go, but I've never actually gone, and you know what? I'm sick of wanting to do things but letting...who-knows-what get in the way. I just finished watching the pottery episode of Community (my new obsession in life) and I don't care if there are people who are better than me, and I don't care if no one wants to do it with me, I'm going to get my hands dirty again. I want to pick clay from under my nails. I want to feel something forming underneath the palms of my hands and I want to guide it into being. I want to create something from a lump of nothing. And next year, I'm going to take a pottery class (as long as it's not on Thursday nights).  

"Without a sense of urgency, desire loses its value."

 This was a friend's facebook status. Well, a person-it-would-be-socially-unacceptable-to-not-be-facebook-friends-with-but-who-is-not-my-actual-friend-in-real life's facebook status. Anyway, I can't get over how it describes with incredible accuracy what happened between me and the guy that featured prominently in so many of my letters this summer. I guess people can be more rash, more inclined to give into their passions and desires, when the end (or in our case, I suppose an extended pause) lingers on the horizon. Kind of like absence making the heart grow fonder before the absence even occurs. And now that we're back in the same place, it's like, should we choose to take them, there are an infinite number of chances to make this work. So every time, we let the moment pass, thinking there will always be another moment. And for now at least, this is tentatively true. 

Confession: As much as I hate to admit this, because it makes me feel like a slut, if he'd played along Saturday night, his first view of my room would have been from pressed against the wall or in my bed. But he didn't, and as such, as I was wandering drunkenly back to my room at 2 AM, I started mumbling to myself about wishing he was with me. 


...I don't know if it was just because I saw him and then got drunk and wanted someone, or if it is actually him I want.

Confession #next: the first time I saw him once we got back to campus, and he hugged me and I felt his hands on the small of my back again, I finally understood what people mean when they talk about their knees going weak.


...It's just, weak from a desire that is specific or generalizable? That is the question.

I shaketh my fist at you, dangblasted Universe

All I want is just a tiny little adventure. Just to go see something new and exciting with someone I love--hell, at this point I'd even settle for doing something new and exciting with someone I barely know. 

I just need a break from the monotony. Something to make this stint at home worthwhile (not that I had any feasible alternatives to it).

Dear Universe,

Is that too much to ask?

-Maya 

PS: