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1. This is the most nonsensical essay prompt EVER. "The Telling" is called "The Telling" because it's about the importance of telling everybody everything. There is no explanation left for me to make because the entire story *is* an explanation of this idea of the Telling that Ursula LeGuin cooked up, thinly veiled as narrative fiction. The idea of "Telling" as a metaphor for the text of the book itself? The most presumptuous thing EVER. Everything is already solved; I cannot come up with two pages of further deconstruction.
2. It's October. This means I've been here two months. Two months is not long enough to put down real roots. While I've met all sorts of wonderful spiffy people to hang out with, I haven't had the time to make the sort of friends that I feel comfortable going to if something goes wrong, or that I feel comfortable asking what's wrong if I think something is. For once in my life, I have vast numbers of spiffy people to chill with, but not to seriously talk to. Maybe Beth and Nicole, but that's about it. And I hate, hate hate having to pretend everything's fine if something's not, and I hate having to call people back home and talk to them about things that are on my mind here that they don't even know anything about because they're in a different universe, or might as well be. And I know it's largely just a matter of time--or should be--but I still feel like life here is fun and exciting and SO SUPERFICIAL, and while in many ways that's an improvement over frustrating and melodramatic and never there when it's actually social time, I was established and comfortable and serious opinions got exchanged and serious bitching, ranting, venting, crying, discussing, deconstructing and catharsis happened and I never felt like I had to pretend things were fine if they weren't and I usually didn't have to feel like my closest friends were pretending things were fine if they weren't because moping at near-strangers is rude. And there's always new-people anxiety, and of course with teenagers the key is to just be chill. I am not naturally good with chill. I am naturally inclined towards being intense and obnoxiously personal and opinionated and weird and excitable and dramatic and nosy and I want to know everything about everyone. And I like to talk about politics and religion at the dinner table and I'm stuck between feeling fake if I don't and rude if I do. And I don't like having to say I'm fine all the time when people ask me how I'm doing; I like having people around I'm comfortable with enough to say "I want to kill things" if I am not fine and want to kill things and who will say that to me, even if we hate each other sometimes, or a lot of the time. And I know I just have to hang on and not fuck up and time will help solidify things but in the meantime, ohhhhhhhhhh my god, making friends is so much more work even than maintaining them once I've got them. And I feel horrible when I think things are not going well with people I don't know well enough to have them come to me or for me to ask without being invasive, but really like anyway.
3. Why is it easier to socialize during the week than on weekends? That's retarded. Oh, wait, it's because I don't like fucking around with my brain chemicals any more than they fuck with themselves already. That's doubly retarded.
4. Global Society annoys the hell out of me these days.
2. It's October. This means I've been here two months. Two months is not long enough to put down real roots. While I've met all sorts of wonderful spiffy people to hang out with, I haven't had the time to make the sort of friends that I feel comfortable going to if something goes wrong, or that I feel comfortable asking what's wrong if I think something is. For once in my life, I have vast numbers of spiffy people to chill with, but not to seriously talk to. Maybe Beth and Nicole, but that's about it. And I hate, hate hate having to pretend everything's fine if something's not, and I hate having to call people back home and talk to them about things that are on my mind here that they don't even know anything about because they're in a different universe, or might as well be. And I know it's largely just a matter of time--or should be--but I still feel like life here is fun and exciting and SO SUPERFICIAL, and while in many ways that's an improvement over frustrating and melodramatic and never there when it's actually social time, I was established and comfortable and serious opinions got exchanged and serious bitching, ranting, venting, crying, discussing, deconstructing and catharsis happened and I never felt like I had to pretend things were fine if they weren't and I usually didn't have to feel like my closest friends were pretending things were fine if they weren't because moping at near-strangers is rude. And there's always new-people anxiety, and of course with teenagers the key is to just be chill. I am not naturally good with chill. I am naturally inclined towards being intense and obnoxiously personal and opinionated and weird and excitable and dramatic and nosy and I want to know everything about everyone. And I like to talk about politics and religion at the dinner table and I'm stuck between feeling fake if I don't and rude if I do. And I don't like having to say I'm fine all the time when people ask me how I'm doing; I like having people around I'm comfortable with enough to say "I want to kill things" if I am not fine and want to kill things and who will say that to me, even if we hate each other sometimes, or a lot of the time. And I know I just have to hang on and not fuck up and time will help solidify things but in the meantime, ohhhhhhhhhh my god, making friends is so much more work even than maintaining them once I've got them. And I feel horrible when I think things are not going well with people I don't know well enough to have them come to me or for me to ask without being invasive, but really like anyway.
3. Why is it easier to socialize during the week than on weekends? That's retarded. Oh, wait, it's because I don't like fucking around with my brain chemicals any more than they fuck with themselves already. That's doubly retarded.
4. Global Society annoys the hell out of me these days.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-24 01:45 am (UTC)Yet, I was just wondering: did you feel similarily in France? or was it more of an enclosed group? (curious analytical question which will possibly relate to my own college transition next year)
and congratulations if this is lucid. i don't think i'm making much sense to anyone right now.
no subject
Date: 2006-10-24 05:41 pm (UTC)I go to a pretty small college, but its big enough that maneouvering my way through a freshman class of 500 is pretty friggin' daunting for me. I am not the most socially competent human being ever.