I have so much to say, create, and do, and so little space in this city to put any of it. I’m slightly frightened about who I’m going to become after graduate school. It feels like one giant drain. I’m getting really frustrated at how atomized this life is. The things I think and the thing I write and the things I say are not transferring to any real communities. The small peer group I do have is so fragmented anyway, processing itself is so lonely. Accountability feels like a punctured balloon. So much time goes into just resuscitating dialogue and community. It’s absurd. It feels like I’m time traveling sometimes in that I haven’t felt this damn insecure since high school. What is going on. I am not sure what my next move is. I don’t know how to magically create community when I feel so constrained here. How do people survive graduate school socially and emotionally?
-
-
Most people know by now of my growing anxiety issues with climate change and in general, how I hate fending off the neo-malthusean population control rhetoric that comes along with it. But guess what! We saw snow last week in new york!? How is that even possible? It has been like 50 degrees outside. So in honor of all my shades of crazy, this photo makes me secretly really happy.
Happy 2012!
-
veggie pot pie!
mushrooms, onions, broccoli, cauliflower, carrots
goat cheese, feta, a little parmigiana
w/ homemade crust.
Boom.All I have to say is… boom.
-
Next year after I get back from my summer placement, it’s this. Have to. By then, less top 40 popstars will have it, heh, and I’ll probably get tired of long hurr.
Kate Lanphear style. Although I gotta say, Kelis did everything first.
Remind me, k?
.. ha, i have to wake up in 5.5 hrs for class.
-
My friend Juan made a salad that blew out my brains this summer. So I re-did it today. It’s a fresh spinach salad with feta, strawberries, walnuts and a honey-balsamic vinaigrette. I added a good pinch of paprika. I feel myself getting happier each bite. Haha.
It’s a little cold in Atlanta. The weather reminds me of New York. I was walking in the sun when an Erkin Koray song (love them psychedelic riffs) comes on - I’m wearing my hair in a sloppy bun - smoking a cigarette - made me miss so much the days of walking to work on 34th street and chinatown, minding my own business, leaving campus, leaving home. I do really well in mountains and forests, I do really well in cities. I’m not in love with the South though, not any fault of its own.
-
this is what i’ll look like after 40 years of working in development. minus hair. in environmentalism class right now.
my environ teacher is kind of a big deal. but he treats us like we’re 5, and does spongebob voices in class. he like coined resilience theory and panarchy in systems theory. but i get distracted by his impression of patrick.
-
this video makes me so happy. i effing love this band.
-
random sentence from today’s reading:
“Since the promulgation of the 1959 Law on Marriage and the Family, with which the Vietnamese State outlawed arranged and forced marriages and made voluntary love a requirement for marriage, Vietnamese couples have married for love.”
p122 from The Secret: Love, Marriage, and HIV
Which by the way, is avaliable for free on scribd HERE!
more:
“Our notion of “the secret” is in some ways parallel to that presented by Michael Taussig as “the public secret”: “that which is generally known by cannot be spoken” (1999:50). The public secret, he argues, is a powerful form of social knowledge, taking shape quite differently from the way that Michel Foucault articulated sex as a topic whose hidden-ness is everywhere revealed and regulated through discourse.” blah blah blah, kind of an interesting read.
-
5am booklist
James Baldwin : The Collected Essays
Rey Chow : The Protestant Ethnic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Paulo Freire : Pedagogy of the Oppressed
Raminder Kaur / John Hutnyk : Travel Worlds/Journeys into Contemporary Cultural Politics
Vijay Prashad : Karma of Brown Folk…are the five books I would use if I could indoctrinate a whole generation of people through forced reading camps. I just really enjoy reading and re-reading those. &because I have a soul too, fiction I really loved:
Milan Kundera : Unbearable Lightness of Being
Lawrence Chua : Gold by The Inch
Hanif Kureshi : The Black Album
Yukio Mishima : Spring Snow
Sunil Gangopadhyay : Prothom Alo
hmm.. that was hard. turns out i don’t have much of a soul. always had trouble with fiction. maybe that’s what i’m metaphysically fretting over and also why i can’t sleep right now.
-
recent conversations
Emails between me and my dad this morning:
1.
Sharmi, remember BLAHBLAHBALH uncle’ son (the one with a bandana). He was asking for your e-mail. I hope it’s OK if I share your e-mail with him.
Abbu
2.
That’s weird. Why?- Sharmi
3.
No idea. Must have been smitten.
Abbu
4.
ew. - Sharmi
and also,
-
Phase1&2 of Krystle graphic-novelizimatored. I’ll scan the final tomorrow after I ink it again. color version looks pretty good in person. this was fun to make. I was stupid and didn’t bring any cameras with me to atlanta. or paints. so i had to get a crappy chalky watercolor set with brushes showing signs of brush-alopecia. I’m totally cracked out by the way after attempting to read 50pages of political economy text. fail. by the way, my friend Krystle is so bootifool that I wanted to start with her for portraits. hopefully I’ll become more of a homework dodger as grad school progresses and have a lot of “portraits” this month. i wonder if emory has free access to adobe illustrator, then i could really go to town and comicify buds. i miss new yorkers.
-
Yesterday was the death anniversary of Emmett Till. Earlier this summer I saw a production of James Baldwin’s Blues For Mr.Charlie, his 64’ play partly based on Till’s murder. I was shook up, again. I was shook up mostly by some reactions from the audience. Hey, Emmett Till, Vincent Chin, Mathew Shepard .. they are American history and a part of the American identity. It’s always hard being around folks or among audiences that deny this, in whatever refraction of emotion they find easy to use whether that’s guilt or anger. We need to have a relationship with horror, as a method. If you don’t, what the fuck privileged dream world do you live in? Anyway, much love for the Tills and feeling especially thankful for my NYC fam who organizes, drinks, makes art, and loves in struggle with me. Miss em.
seriously though, what the fuck am i doing in grad school.
-
wahaha. this is kind of funny. the challah turned out pretty good. the crust was a little flakier than i thought and it’s medium-sweet. i think next time i’ll use honey instead of sugar. well, the funny part is, turns out i’m probably not going to this shindig tonight. maybe i can make half of it into french toast because i have a 10am morning class on tuesday. hmm. bummer. fresh baked bread is kind of awesome. how come i can bake awesome bread but completely fail in the cupcakes/cakes category?
well good job, me.
-
yo dudes. i can’t handle it. i’m so excited to bake this challah bread. dang it looks good already. freshly baked challah: randomest thing to bring to a party.
my babaganoush was a hit yesterday. there’s some mean looking folks in the public health school, but it’s okay because they cleaned off my babaganoush.
I’m going to post a finished product in 45mins. hella excited. i don’t know why i’m on this middle east trip. shit, in fact i just had couscous for lunch. so weird.
-
boohahaha. i have a habit of sending my parents stuff i cook. and i just made some bomb-butt babaganoush! tahini is so dang expensive at my grocery. might just make my own next time. life is okay! I survived my first 20page grad school paper. fell asleep for about 15 hours after finishing it. so celebrating, by wearing lipstick and all the clothes that i’d normally wear in new york because i’m turnin 25 and whats the point if you’re not having fun while doing all the very very serious things you normally do in your life.
i swear, i’m going to start painting. i have the paint set next to me as i’m typing. swear.
-
art archive. scroll through.
