It’s funny that as I was leaving NYC and packing up all my stuff, I was getting deeply depressed that this was all I had to show for the time that I’d spent in New York. That this was what life amounted to. Granted, the stuff comes tomorrow and I may feel likewise overwhelmed, but I do think I’ve learned from my mistakes in the pursuit of minimalism, storage, and clutter-reduction. Keep things simple, keep things clean, don’t buy things that lead to other things.

In many ways it’s starting over with no baggage and it helps that in the new apartment there is even a separate kendo closet. I am just grateful, and ready to earn the rank that has already been granted me.

Can nostalgia have a purpose?

Okay, that was a joke between me and a man named Rob. But really, now. I haven’t thought about this nearly long enough to feel adequately nostalgic, but I propose three purposes (non-exhaustive) for nostalgia: letting go, impressing oneself, and learning something new.

Now that I’m moving and trying to come well under the 20,000 pound allowance (leagues, under the sea, and other such numerical jokes), the best use I can think of for nostalgia is just a pang before you let go, as I am discarding many of my undergraduate files which I no longer needed, and no longer needed even as I graduated–but how was I to know. Nostalgia, then, is a momentary tribute to an irrelevant past.

Yet, I recognize: I recognize myself and even some of my jokes that’ve lasted when I reread my high school satires of high school. Ironically, I am currently living in a doctoral satire of high school. Or grim parody. Or post-tragic farce. But the best part about auto-nostalgia is being surprised that you are capable of such wit at such an age, or such energy or drive, or stubbornness, and then hopefully this teaches you to reach for that standard yet again in what you do. The undercurrent of self within change.

And that’s the real purpose of nostalgia. It lets you learn something new about what you thought you knew. Or were passed out for, in the case of most of seasons 7 and 8 of 24. Re-viewing, re-thinking, re-appreciating for the first time, at least in that way. And this is why I do re-visit the same texts over and over again, because I do believe that they have plenty to give, on each reading something different, so my nostalgia is not a longing, or a VH1 special about those moribund 90′s, but rather pointed, somehow, to the future.

Monday I rose at 530, tried to tie up some COIs, and went to two lessons which failed on 2-(-1) and not really defining a permutation well. The quesadilla trailer was absent, but it was early, and then I went to the old school, and worked through a full day, including tutoring before scoring some antibiotics and some tasty beers with Rob and Laser and Laser’s fiancee. Unfortunately foodwise I ate everything: falafel, quesadilla (meh), PRpanada, and even an Artichoke slice.

Tuesday I woke at 530 again, and saw two lessons which were a rerun and ripped from the pages of internet and one that was nominally better and learned of a re-scheduling for the following day, and went to school and met with the dissertation group, participated in a focus group, and skipped kendo to try and finish up and mostly got far enough, though I skipped out on a lecture on critical pedagogy (yeah) and probably started that night on this downward spiral of 24: Season 7.

Wednesday I rose at 530 and rolled into work early, with a long overdue local tamal and then a meeting with my chair who set me straight before running off to wonder where my quesadilla folks were, and then I ran a workshop which I chose not to intervene but now I think otherwise, and drove home with the boss, and ended up on the F train to the GC where I had to listen to an adjunct “workshop” which more like a lecture, and then went to iai, emerging unscathed, going home and drinking too much instead of getting fully caught up.

Thursday I woke up drunk. Very drunk. Made it through breakfast, two hours in the office napping, some roof napping, and then staggered to do two observations, one good but not good enough, and then yet another game for which we don’t know the rules and even going to win, had a mediocre quesadilla de hongos at the replacement truck and then went home to change and get all hipstery and learn that the leakage which has knocked out my electricity will soonbe fixed at co-op’s expense and then meet to do 30 minutes’ work in an hour with a “colleague” and then skipped kendo to hang out with Tri and get some sweet sweet love and then stand up Rob (sorry), and then home to get a few more episodes in.

Friday I woke up at 530 and made some progress on the writing, but not enough (10 minutes missing) and saw a lesson that was half of what it should have been and then another probability lesson that probably should have made more sense and these two sandwiched a crappy cemita with not enough produce, and then to school and hung out until drinks and grazing with the dissertation sisters though standing up Rob and then coming home to drink and not work and look forward to a weekend of catching up and wearing straw hats and doing laundry and other upkeep.

But next week looks better.

Well, I’ve been kind of an asshole, because although I claim to have taken a backwards, sideways path, in the end I’ve been very achievement-oriented, about success and this figmentary thing I call my career, which any classicist will tell you is just a course or trajectory, and by definition anything, with the good in parentheses. This is perhaps my alpha-male tendency, albeit not at the cost of cutting other people’s throats.

But now facing a September with no plan, income, or prospects, I don’t know any more.

What do I really want to be in ten years? Well, yondan. The rest are details. Is money really so important? Or am I overcompensating given my parents’ struggles, troubles, and self-doubts? Surely I plan on no family, so I should be cheap. What is the work that I really want to do? These are questions that won’t be answered in any blog post soon.

With four outlets, my internet is now netbook only, my cable internet due to be canceled, and only a computer and a dim light til morning.

This life here seems sustainable, and it would take so little to be able to sustain, and there is yet hope for retirement, but of course these ambitions must rest because there are decades yet to walk I think, and this is something to be cherished, so that it’s not about looking back and missing a past that can’t be had, but living in the moment, and having some occasional anticipation when appropriate, once in a while or two.

No, I am dishonest, I keep it private, and so, fling things all over where they do not belong.

I do not know when I watch Shimura-Mifune in Drunken Angel with whom to most fully sympathize.

and of course all of my real, regular friends, save the temporary cohabitant.

BOOTS
only farm-quality.

HATS
caps in spring and summer in light of sunglasses
real hats never donned in confined spaces with women, while eating (unless walking)

COATS
hoodies
rainjackets
all for minimalism

SOCKS
why bother?

Having not prepared very much at all in the past three months, though having learned a whole syllabary over the summer, Rob and I decided to actually take the JLPT at two different levels, in my case yonkyu.

There’s not much to say about my actual proficiency, beyond the fact that given my goals are dojo-based eavesdropping and reading, and perhaps some collateral improvement of my Chinese, my experience of the language has been very different from the intended audience which is people who have completed a first course in the language. And so I am anything but polite, I’ve never really listened to a woman talk, I don’t need to ask where anything is (it’s still a relatively well-organized dojo), and I favor kanji over hiragana in the place of kanji which I am still reading-out letter by letter.

Mostly, it’s learning about what goes on the test, which are these arbitrary exercises like scrambles, pictures, find-the-kanji-that’s-not-impossible, pronounce the kanji (as a Japanese person would, this is key), and the like, which I literally had not even looked at until the morning of the exam. But more to the point, this was my first standardized exam in probably four years, although I have been on the inflicting end more than once in the interim, and so the glazing over, and the sense of vague panic as I’m trying to figure out what the question is even asking for, and did we learn this at all, but then again, just taking the opportunity to glean whatever small facts I can, and crossing out any of the common characters to do some sort of analysis of difference which might get me in terms of multiple-guessing and the like.

I suppose the test-culture is much more efficient than I’m used to, what with the sequential hand-up techniques, and multiple breaks and seating-times. It’s too bad I no longer administer the NYSESLAT: I would do so with far greater sympathy now than ever before.

i.
ii. Policy
iii. Relevant v. Responsive
iv. Methods
v. Episodes
vi. Meetings
vii. Activities
viii. Professional development
ix. Personal development
x. Implications

Strolled through most of my old math camp stomping grounds today, during a good sunny afternoon timeslot in a winterier stretch than what I was used to. The undergrads are out in full force, and Larkin now has an overpass and is all glass, rather than a dank weight room.

Coming back, the obvious observation is that everything is smaller, not that I’ve grown any taller, but perhaps just in how I’ve been more places and don’t go to Mirror Lake at eye level, but from above, so of course everything kicks in.

THe changes are everywhere–the midnight Ultimate field is now a sanded volleyball court, the entryways are swipe-carded, Insomnia is now a pan-Asian bento place, Long’s, however, is still shuttered, and so on. The embodied GPS kicks in before too long, even if some blocks are off and the meats at La Bamba have gotten more authentic (or perhaps I now know what counts as “authentic”).

But the greatest silent moment was actually in the old lecture hall, where the blackboard seemed to bear no mark of any of those four years of lectures that I watched Ross deliver with his oversized chalk: of course we’d all learn more if we saw the same lectures each year with greater understanding.

So there is a slight feeling of nostalgia and the past, but I’m glad that this is a short trip.

I say this in part because I’m godawful at making things that I don’t use. Memos, for instance. In my unfiled head I have been confident in never writing them, because why state the obvious? Having been in this game, however, for now over a year, it’s somehow now necessary for me to recognize that it takes these letters to oneself and one’s PI: but of course what kind of information will be useful later you can’t know until later.

Probably this is a broader point about legitimate peripheral participation.