BOom Boom.

Summer Reads
Or It Already Feels like July...

Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex

Thomas Pynchon Gravity's Rainbow 

Michel Foucault This is Not a Pipe

My airplane read:


Sara Gruen Water for Elephants


And my "re-reads"


Herman Hesse Steppenwolf


Mark Z. Danielewski House of Leaves




Rilke's Letters to a Young Poet






Maybe possible unemployment and living alone has a bright side...
  

Restored Working Habits.

Having spent the last two years working in the public sector, mainly the public school system (ranging from Elementary to University), is, by far the most challenging thing I have ever done. College was a sweet summer breeze in comparison to the long hours, little pay, the disproportionate number of students:me, demands of a collapsing school system, undocumented students politic, and well, working in a strange melting pot of race where I continually am too hyper-aware of my own race, my own racial baggage as a white female going into a school composed almost entirely of Hispanics and African-Americans.

It is one thing to read about the system, it is another thing entirely to experience it.

However, one of my students gave me a card, and inside, there was a scribbled letter that read,

"I've had an amazing time with you this year. I can't tell you how thankful I am to have met you. I needed the 'realist' point of view you have given me. I really have loved connecting with you these past couple months. I know we will always talk through my college years. I hope to always keep in touch.


"ps. I will never forget you because you have truly made a great impact on my life"


I guess, I would say, working in the public sector sucks, for a lack of a better term.  It's not a lucrative career for someone in their mid-twenties trying to get their feet on the ground monetarily, have a life outside of work, try and maintain a social network.  And with recent budget cuts, the jobs are slim pickings and incredibly competitive.

Regardless, I love my job, which is something that I know most people my age cannot say. I work hard, and I deal with an incredible firing of stressors. However, at the end of the day, it's all worth it and it feels good.

As I leave this industry, I have no idea how to operate in a regular job that doesn't serve the public or work on youth advocacy. I don't know how I am going to sit in a cubicle, make copies, merge excel spreadsheets, answer phones...or just have a job that pays me, just because it pays me. It all just seems so selfish and hollow. I wish everyone post-graduate could of had a two years of rewarding and internally fulfilling job. And, I know this sounds, but the experience in itself alters the way you view wage labor, worker's rights, public funding, large governmental systems and becomes a shining example  of all that 'crazy' social theory you spent four years learning.

I love Texas

but Texas will never be home.

As the weather already starts to reach the upper 90's and I prepare myself for four straight months of hot, humid sticky days, I can't help but start to miss Washington.

For the following reason:

Lake Roosevelt 

 I spent every summer on this lake up until this point and this will be the first summer since I was 10 that I won't go boating here. As it heats up, I can already tell I will be yearning for mid-80's pleasant temperatures, pristine blue water to ski on. 

The Art of Things

I moved across the country with my car full of nothing but the essentials. No trailer, no truck, just a  a gray Ford Taurus with the trunk full to the brim, backseat packed and a bike rack. 2,300 miles of open road and nothing but the belongings in my car.

I'm moving again, (my fourth move in three years) and this time, I don't want a lot of stuff. Suffice to say, I have not had the opportunity to gain a lot of material things. My job only allows for me to live on the bare essentials, but it's been a positive life change.

But, as I'm packing going through all my old belongings, I am throwing them away.

Elizabeth Bishop, in her very famous poem, wrote about the ease of losing important things. As I'm losing important material possessions, I like to think I'm gaining new experience through some sort of minimalist living.

I don't need a lot, I desire excess, but I suppose that is the American mindset. Still, I will only have 10 boxes of things, and for that, I am really happy.

Brief moment in Time

Beirut.

2005 was a solid year for music. It was my graduating year of high school and I like that it was such a strong year for independent music. The Shins, The Flaming Lips, Le Tigre, Sleater Kinney’s last years, The Decembrists, Neko Case, Beck, Queens of the Stone Age, Nada Surf, Rogue Wave, The Tragically Hip (sometimes), Band of Horses… Yeah, I’m looking directly at you Sasquatch music festival ’06…

Let’s take a brief moment for nostalgia:













However worn Converse aside--

I’ve realized one album that continuously becomes overlooked and shadowed by hipsters and music critics alike is Beirut’s Gulag Orkestrar. And I admit, usually in my blogs I try and let the music critics and hipsters create posts about music. It is, after all, their one area of confidence and safe haven. They do it better.



Creating arguments for “good” art is a slippery slope, from Kant to Ruskin, to some modernist popular artist commercialized mixed media… art is not something that is tangible, logical and easy to prove. Creating an argument? Sure. Platonic critiques on binary organization on art’s worth to society? Kant’s judgment on the aesthetic? Not so much. And, in fact, this very subjective interpretation is what makes art beautiful.
Beauty is any particular thing to any particular person.

However, with all this, I can say, Gulag Orkestrar is just too great to be lost in the times of dusty record shelves and old mixtapes. The entire album goes beyond just being music. This music is based of a genre that attempts to bring fractured people together.

I was introduced to this album by someone who had a strong attachment to gypsy music and Balkan Brass. Much of the point of this type of music isn’t to be “good”, but rather, to bridge social, economic and cultural gaps.

Case in point:




This is what solidified Gulag Orkestrar as a means of successful artistic expression. Not only does the entire album sustain itself in versatility and musical talent, but so much of Condon’s live performances are about making the audience feel something similar and universal.

The Rise of the Overeducated Underclass

My dad recently visited town and he added a subtle reminder that I will be 25 in six months. For some reason, this struck a hard chord. It made me uncomfortable. With age, come­ societal expectations set up by older generations. Older generations with an idea of  working America that no longer exists.

 Post-graduate life has been hard, especially since I hit the job market running when the economic stability resembled a mild great-depression. My life greatly resembles the article, “Educated, Unemployed and Frustrated” (NY Times, Op/Ed)

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/03/21/opinion/21klein.html

While driving in the car today with a friend down a winding two lane Texas highway, I realized my generation might, and probably will be,  the first generation that makes less money than our parents. We were raised with the expectations of the 90's, a time of prosperous growth, social complacency and the boom of the Internet. 

I now know this working America is gone. I am not sure how to navigate a society that does not foster and grow with young, hard working, educated, intelligent individuals. But, regardless, I feel for most of my friends who are graduating college and entering the fierce, unforgiving shackles of the work-a-day world.

However, for me, graduating college five months after the banking crisis and the housing collapse has definitely put a unique perspective on the ideology of working, of economic stability, and what it means to be a young educated person in America.  

http://money.cnn.com/news/storysupplement/economy/recession_depression/

Today I out ran this storm:

Out through the fields and the woods
And over the walls I have wended;
I have climbed the hills of view
And looked at the world, and descended;

Robert Frost "Reluctance"