Spring course work

Now that grades for the first term are in (ABCD), I’m more comfortable at UIC and have a pretty good idea of what the hell I’m doing (hint: mindmaps are my friend), I’ve gone ahead and moved from thirteen credit hours to sixteen. I’ll be taking the following courses:

• Russian 102, elementary russian ii
• Politics 184, international relations
• Russian 242, tolstoy
• Politics 286, united nations and other international organizations
• Politics 349, seminar on comparative politics (the arab spring and iran)

Three courses on things I enjoy (politics); foreign language requirement; and a literature course on a guy I hate. Should be fun.

On anxiety (alternatively, why I hate it here)

So. Today is Thursday, 2011 December 22 at 439 in the morning. About two hours ago, after going through the new “Facebook Timeline” and revisiting the status’ of 2010-August, I had an anxiety attack and instantly wanted to be back in Chicago. I texted my boyfriend, who didn’t respond but still oddly managed to update Facebook ten minutes later on a completely unrelated subject; and calmed myself down by smoking, taking a bath, cleaning and smoking some more.

Some people have asked me why I don’t return “home” (that is, to Rockford) more often. This is exactly the reason why. I hate it here. The memories of my brother are too strong. His grave, the funeral home, the high school we went to, the town he loved, his dog, the house that we lived in for more than fifteen years… Some of his friends visit four or five times a week so as to be closer to his memory; I am the exact opposite and minimize my time here as much as possible, and what little time I do spend here just produces anxiety, fear and terror. Its been less than forty eight hours and I already want to be back in Chicago, am already having anxiety attacks. Alas, I am condemned to be here, with memories of my brother haunting me, for another six bloody days. And the worst (Christmas Eve/Day) is yet to come…

Winter readings

Since I have the next month more-or-less to myself, I’m going to engage in something that I haven’t really had time for: reading for pleasure. Reading … for pleasure? Without deadlines and due dates and essays and strings attached? YES PLEASE!

One of the mistakes I made during the summer was attempting to read more than I could realistically handle: 40 000 pages in sixty books or something absurd like that. This month’s readings will be much more managable. Two of the texts will be rereads, favorites of mine that I make a point to reread at least once a year, namely:

- The Tragedy of King Richard III
- Transmetropolitan

The other texts are in no particular order, number less than two thousand pages collectively, and can easily be done in the course of two or three days per text. They include, but will not necessarily be limited to:

- Cambridge history of modern Iran
- NATO-Russia relations in the 21st century
- Global organizations: the United Nations
- Living history: Hillary Roham Clinton
- Very short introduction to international relations
- Very short introduction to Foucault
- Plato’s Symposium
- The Chechan wars: will Russia go the way of the Soviet Union?
- Stalinism on the frontier of empire: women and state formation in the Soviet far east

Its interesting to note that, while all of these books are obviously on subjects that I’m very interested in, only one of them is being read with the specific intention of preparing for a course (namely the History of modern Iran, with a possible segway into an Iranian history podcast). Otherwise than those two, which will have greater attention paid to them, I fully intend to just enjoy myself.

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End of line

So. I haven’t updated this blog in some time, despite prior promises to do so once or twice a week. Now that the fall 2011 term is over, I’m going to try updating it more frequently — at least once a month, hopefully.

It has been a strange semester. My transition to living in Chicago was smoother than I expected it to be; and I now know that I can never willingly go back to Rockford. My mental health in general and PTSD in partiular have oscillated wildly since coming here. I have begun to manage my personal and professional lives almost exclusively from a tablet computer. An old lover who hurt me in the summer reintroduced himself, and after some hesitation I agreed to let him back into my life. We are now in a relationship that, despite my infrequent jealousy and frequent insecurity, makes me very happy. Usually. My time management skills, or lack thereof, suffered as a result of that decision. I began smoking (Virgina Slims 120′s menthol) to cope with stress and frequent anxiety. I confessed to the alcoholism that has emerged since my brothers death, and am beginning to take steps to eliminate that. I had a brief affair with Tumblr that lasted all of a week. I learned that mindmaps are the best way for me to take notes and manage information, and have been consistently using them for that purpose for three months. My epilepsy took a turn for the worse, with me experiencing a grand mal and ending up in the emergency room around Thanksgiving. That’s never happened before, but it may happen again if I’m under enough stress. Despite reading lots of Dostoyevsky (or perhaps because of it?) I am not much closer to solving the question of religion and theodicy that has plagued me since my brothers death.

So. Yeah. I’ll be here in Chicago for most of the month of December. Classes start up again on January 09. More on that later…

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On nail painting & trans issues

I’ve been meaning to write this post for a while now, and having returned to the Rockford area and having seen some of my dearest friends for the first time in months has served as a catalyst. There has been … some controversy in the past with certain members of my family, and certain friends, about why I paint my nails and why I, despite my gayness, embrace certain “feminine” aspects of myself. I’m going to take a few moments to explain two things. For certain people this’ll be preaching to the choir; to others, hopefully, it’ll be, if nothing else, informative.

• It shocks me that some people still don’t realize this, but sex and gender are not one and the same. I have a penis, and I like guys. That defines me in sexual terms as a gay man. My *gender* has no physical nature, but rather, its up here (taps skull). Its an entirely constructed concept. People can be masculine, feminine, both, neither, or something else entirely. I personally identify as mostly masculine with a couple of feminine bits thrown in. Gender never is and never was a strict binary male/female, X/Y. Gender is, to quote Doctor Who, wibbly-wobbly.
• Now, what do sex and gender have to do with Michael painting his nails? I’ll tell you: within our, the LGBT community, the last letter is oft neglected and ostracized more so than the other three. In short, I wear nail polish because one of my best friends, one of the greatest persons on the planet, is a T. That person didn’t choose to be what they are, but they can and have made a choice to be honest, both to me and to themselves, about what they are feeling. I wear nail polish as a means of affirming that person, one of the loves of my life, and their true selves. If I have to fuck with people’s expectations of what is male and what is female, then I’ll fuck with expectations. The trans community needs all the support it can get.

This is very badly written — unsuprisingly considering its three in the morning, being written when the internet is out and a new operating system installation is about to begin. At any rate, see you in the world.

Culture shock, summer plans

So. My time at Elmhurst has ended, and here I am at Garden Prairie, in the midst of profound culture shock. No train!? No recycling!? No New York Times delivered for the students to read with their morning coffee!? No bus stop!? The nearest library is how far away!? Why does the water taste so bad!? Where are my bike lanes!? Why is the pool so far away!? Why do I have to drive everywhere!? Its…a massive lifestyle shift, and one that I want to escape as soon as possible.

Alas, I am condemned to be here for the next thirteen weeks or so. So, there are a number of things that I will be doing to keep myself busy between today, 20110520, and the start of school on 20110822.

1. After the trial, I’ll be working at Steak n’ Shake for three our four days a week. Its not idea but, hey, its money. I’ll also be doing some volunteer work at Petco, taking care of the little kitties.
2. There are about twenty thousand pages on my reading list, realistically I’ll get through half of it. The first victim is Hamlet, which should be finished tomorrow…
3. There is, of course, the chaos associated with Pride weekend…
4. I’ll be doing two OCW podcasts: one on the history of Iran to the Safavid period and another on ancient Greek history. Knowledge plus lots.

Aside from all that, the summer will be fairly somber. Between the trial and the grave marker, when I’m not engaged in one through four, I’ll be meditating or reflecting on what was lost, and what can be gained. One thing I’ve learned over the past nine months is that … for starters, obviously, nothing is forever; but more importantly, the worst has already happened. I cannot get bogged down in pain, because the worst has already happened.

Anyways, enjoy the show.

UIC plans, again

So. Courses for my first semester at UIC have been decided upon (Google Calendar). They are:

1. Gender & woman’s studies: From the convent to the streets: Latin-American woman writers in translation
2. Foreign language: Elementary Russian one
3. Theatre: Acting one
4. Russian: Dostoevsky
5. Religion: The divine comedy

Those courses are more-or-less set in stone, there is a possibility that one of them (Dostoyevsky) will be dropped. Where does that leave me then? The current plan is to major in gender & woman’s studies; minor in theatre, and minor in one other area (classics? russian? political science? psychology? something else?). At the conclusion of my time at UIC (which’ll probably last two, two and a half years), I’m seriously considering getting a Masters in social work. It would be a good way to both combine my interests, help individuals, and is more likely to result in an immediate job (as opposed to persuing a PhD, which is suffering from an oversaturation — ten PhD’s for every one job). At any rate, its something I need to think about more, and talk to some people about. My mother thinks I’m like POTUS Obama, taking forever to make a decision — I don’t deny that….

Summer reading

Over the past five months I’ve purchased a number of books from Amazon’s used book store. Physical books, oddly enough — despite having a nook, I can’t seem to shake my love of physical books. The nook is still used—I have more than a thousand ebooks on various hard drives—but I still have a fetish for physical books.

In total, I’ve added more than nineteen thousand pages of content. With a twelve week summer, that translates to about fifteen hundred pages a week — or two hundred something a day. The books that I’ve acquired:

1. the borgias and their enemies: 1431-1519
2. the master & margarita
3. days in the lives of social workers: 54 professionals tell “real-life” stories from social work practice
4. oxford world classics: the divine comedy
5. oxford starter russian dictionary
6. oxford world classics the golden bough
7. god is not one: the eight rival religions that run the world
8. blue mars
9. green mars
10. red mars
11. summa theologiae: a concise translation
12. a book of pagan prayer
13. the columbia anthology of gay literature
14. lgbt study new testament
15. oxford world classics hamlet
16. a history of gay literature the male tradition
17. bourgeois hinduism, or the faith of the modern vedantists
18. theatre in southeast asia
19. hindu primary sources: a sectarian reader
20. the american speakership: the office in historical perspective
21. oxford world classics richard iii
22. oxford world classics symposium
23. oxford world classics qur’an
24. year of the king: an actor’s diary and sketchbook
25. the actor’s book of gay and lesebian play
26. world religions: eastern traditions
27. oxford world classics the mabinogion
28. japanese no dramas
29. the complete poems of cavafy
30. traditional japanese theatre
31. desert wisdom: sayings from the desert fathers
32. ramayan 3392 ad volume one
33. ramayan 3392 ad volume two
34. vedanta: heart of hinduism
35. richard the third (murray)
36. angels in america
37. the last campaign: robert f kennedy and 82 days that inspired america
38. good omens
39. richard the third (ross)
40. the killer angels
41. quicksilver
42. freefall
43. oxford world classics upanishads
44. a time it was: bobby kennedy in the sixties

Its going to be a fun summer.

Razor

I’ve lived in Elmhurst for nearly two years now, and in that time I’ve never been criticized, condemned or otherwise attacked because of my sexuality. That record of acceptance was broken yesterday afternoon around 430pm. I was happily riding my bike to Dominick’s, not wearing anything particularly Queer, just minding my own business. One block from the apartment, however, someone on the opposite side of the street loudly called out to me

FAGGOT!

I was rather shocked, and maintained my outward composure. … My hands are shaking now, as I write this, describing what happened. I rode onward, bought my pizza and milk, stood with my bike at the stop sign for a couple of minutes, and began to break down.

FAGGOT!

Whether you’re gay or straight, its…damaging, to be verbally assaulted in public like that. Its like a razor to your self-esteem, to your entire narrative identity. Its a power-play, I dare say its like a form of verbal rape. You are this so therefore you are defective and you need to have your otherness pointed out and laughed at for all the world to see.

FAGGOT!

Fuck the haters. I am what I am. (looks at his tattoos)

Someone has to be.

More tattoos

Yesterday, 20110415, was productive: among other things I acquired two new tattoos.

• The first is the name of a friend from high school who was…defeated by the closet. Its there as a reminder—or a reflection—of where I once was, and how many times I was nearly defeated. Its also a reminder to (try to) not give a flying fuck about what people think of me or other LGBTQ people.
• The second is a small line of Arabic script (النسر الطائر) that phonetically is pronounced altair nasr, and translates as flying eagle. Something to remember while out running or riding the bicycle. This is the first unnecessary “why not?” tattoo.