things fall apart.
**
this morning, i wake up early to go to the schomburg center on 135th to do research for a paper. it's like 10 degrees outside. so i buy a bagel on the way to the train but can't even eat it on the way over there bc my hands are so cold. then i get onto the train and realize that i can't even eat on the train, as per the worst new law ever. can't even finish my coffee on the fucking train. am already pissed off, hungry. get to schomburg, bagel in hand, go into the building. can't eat in there either. the lady at the front tells me that the library isn't open until noon - it is 10:30. i have fucked up and forgot that it only opens at 10 on saturday. i ask if i can wait in the main lobby. she says, "you can wait there, but you can't sit there". this even though there are chairs there. i think, "fucking bitch". i say, "okay, can i wait (sit) right here in the entrance?" she says "no". i tell her it's freezing outside, that there is no place for me to go to wait until noon since all those amenities like coffee shops are missing from this not-yet-gentrified neighborhood. she suggests i go sit in a soul-food buffet joint with the biggest, smelliest deli-style steam table you've ever seen, four blocks away. i am so pissed off i walk out of schomburg and get right back on the train downtown. now here i sit at home.
i have three papers due in about one week. each should be about 25 pages long. i have not started any of them - one of them i haven't even thought of a topic for. i need to put in about 20 hours at schomburg this week if i stand any chance of finishing my research paper before february, but instead here i sit in my bedroom slippers, surfing the internet. i mean, there is such a thing as procrastination, but there is also such a thing of actual denial, and i'm afraid my movement in the direction of the latter might mean i am on the verge of flunking out of school.
**
yesterday at approximately 6:25 pm: i find myself, as if in some sort of fucked-up dream, standing in the middle of the crowded first floor of the comp usa on 5th and 37th, screaming at the top of my lungs. everyone stops what they are doing - employees, customers, all - to stare at me. i am ready to murder laura at the tech desk, elroy who misdiagnosed my laptop over the weekend and almost cost me $500+ in doing so, ruby rayes who told me i could get all my money refunded and that i just had to stop by and show my credit card to do so. my african literature class is about to begin in an advertising agency in the manhattan mall in five minutes; i cannot be late once again. laura has sent me to the commercial sales desk because neither she nor anyone else at the store has any idea what is going on. i have just stood in front of said desk for ten minutes and everybody there and around it has pretended i am invisible. so, i scream. i am going to be late for class, nobody is paying attention to me, i hate comp usa and feel faint at the prospect of having to return one more time, i have already wasted 40 minutes here, i scream and everybody's eyes widen. the security guard moves towards me...
**
my adviser is apparently losing his short-term memory, judging by his new propensity for repeating entire conversations i have already had with him twice, and sending me emails that reproduce almost exactly notes that he has sent me just days before. this frightens me for many reasons, not least because he is supposed to be working with me closely over the next few months to develop a book list for the exams in may that will decide whether i will continue in grad school.
**
last night, after class: i rush down to the knitting factory to see the former unicorns, whose new band is called 'the islands'. the islands are four white kids and two east asian kids. the white kids and one asian kid are dressed like, well, normal hipsters. the other asian kid is dressed like a nerd to the extent that he looks like a clown - bad haircut, thick glasses (not hipster), pants hiked, shirt buttoned up to the top. he plays the violin and dances manically around the stage like a mentally handicapped person. he is the stereotypical east asian nerd who the whole class makes fun of in fifth grade. it has to be an act, but i ask "why?" the normal-looking asian kid has clearly been assigned to seem like a fool even if he doesn't look like one, he plays the recorder and the viola while everyone else is just a normal rock star with a guitar. after about the third song one of the white kids in the band says, "give it up for the chow brothers. they're not really brothers, but they have good spirit. we love them, anyway." the asian kids look embarrassed. i cringe. everyone cheers. some dumb-ass white girl with her midriff showing (again, it is like ten degrees outside) yells, from the audience, "you're fucking sexy" to the nerdy asian violinist. this goes on until we walk out of the show. i leave thinking that i am indeed leaving a fifth-grade classroom. the music wasn't even good. i think about how many people who listen to indie rock are at about the same maturity level of frat boys at a big 10 school.
**
nyu tells me that i am going to lose my income for the next semester, possibly the next year after that. i am on strike and this is how i am repayed for the 40-odd hours i have spent walking around in circles yelling and banging on a bucket in the frigid outdoors in front of the library. people in my department write me emails accusing my friends who are leading the union struggle of white privilege. said union leaders are working their assess off to get the other fuckers, who defend their "right" to scab, a contract. i attempt to bring these sides together to resolve some tensions and the whole thing blows up in everyone's faces - everyone is pissed off with each other. people stop speaking to each other.
**
the end. now excuse me, that was cathartic.
