• 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.

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…

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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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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• 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.

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.

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

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

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.

• 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.