Late nights

I can't sleep, because my sleep schedule is messed up, but also because tonight my roommate and I hosted a beautifully successful dinner party where the people didn't really know each other but clicked wonderfully. We had great food (lasagna by my roommate, cheese sticks by my good friend A, garlicky broccoli and vegan brownies by me, and numerous desserts brought by our friends) and, more importantly, great conversation. I love the human mind and the discussion of life and society and humor and old stuff and new stuff and... I like it all but it tires me out.

I wish my exhaustion could lead me to sleep, but I'm kept up by a racing mind and this song.

Take Back NYU's Sanity

Take Back NYU
Originally uploaded by kmg334

I really have no more words that adequately describe my shame and disappointment at being connected with Take Back NYU. I read through a lot of the articles on their site, but while I can understand some of their demands and mission, I still think that they went about the "occupation" and "protest" in a very immature, inconsiderate and unorganized way. Basically, my sentiment is this:

You should not attempt such immature defiance (and in such small numbers) of an administration you chose to subordinate yourself to by attending this university.

Shark Tank

On a pleasant misty morning,
Originally uploaded by *~\[ Yuga ☼ Sunshine ]/~*

While walking to an NYU dorm in the West Village last night, I was making my way down Morton Street when a bluish light from overhead in one of the apartments stopped me. I peered up at the third-floor loft with its huge windows and I could vaguely make out a large cube shape full of water. The blue light was bathing the inhabitants of this cube - nothing less than actual, live SHARKS. They were little ones, kind of like this...

JK. More like this. But still, I was amazed that people were rich enough and pompous enough to get sharks for their apartment. I was about to just walk on by, shaking my head, but I realized that I just wanted to stand there and look at the sharks a little longer.

In life, I don't think we do that enough. We don't stop to take things in. It's been said many times many ways (much like "Merry Christmas," bad joke) but still, people see something crazy as they live out their lives and simply furrow their brow while they walk on by. Sharks, I definitely cannot just walk on by those.

Googlin' Gramercy

Home is a place you grow up wanting to leave, and grow old wanting to get back to.
Originally uploaded by Em.A~

So I notice a lot of you are coming here from Googling something along the lines of "Gramercy Green NYU housing pictures show me show me show me." I do not mind so much. In fact, I enjoy seeing that people come here looking for Gramercy but stay a little while longer, presumably to read my rambling would-be existential thoughts. I just think it's funny that my blog is the third link on the Google lists when I only have one post about the search terms in question, and the post isn't even that informative.

Here is what I will say about Gramercy:

- It is luxury. Marble countertops, touch-screen microwaves, dishwashers, enormous fridges, talking elevators, seven or so lounges (2 with TVs) throughout the building, upscale subcellar gym and study lounges, a game room, and a great community.
- It is expensive. At almost $13,000 per school year, we are all paying out the ass for this, and you still have to sign non-NYU people in for a max of 3 consecutive nights.
- It is in a great location. Duane Reade is on our ground floor, we're across the street from Starbucks (doesn't take dining dollars unfortunately), blocks away from Chipotle (#1 priority), the Flatiron building, Madison Square Park, the Blender Theater, the Epiphany branch of the NY Public Library, thrift shops galore, and lots of old people. (Don't worry, Baruch, School of Visual Arts or whatever, and plenty of bars are also nearby. You can solve that equation.) It normally takes fast walkers 20 minutes to get to the NYU campus downtown, and 25 for me cause I never learned to walk good.

- I am leaving it for off-campus housing next year, which terrifies me and really makes me not want to talk about it on this blog, which I like to think I save for thoughts of prettiness and intellectualism. What I like to think and what is actually true, of course, are a bit like gold and silver: very good but also quite different. That was a simile.

I'm done.

Think Me

I wish I weren't already behind in schoolwork, because I find that not being on the same page as the professor hinders my ability to think critically in a progressive manner from day to day. Nevertheless, I am really enjoying the path along which my thoughts have been taking me lately.

Somehow, all my subjects seem to be connected to each other this semester. A class on the French ghetto recalls my Education reading about a Lower East Side school in the projects during the 70s and 80s. The social factors of education wind around each other and into the topic of bilingualism, another class I'm taking. I test and question my own degree of bilingualism in a French translation course while also wondering about the pedagogy and teachability of translation. Then there's my class entitled Metaphors of Modern Theater, where we read and discuss plays of the absurd, which kind of zooms back out onto life in general.

It's kind of silly how it has taken me five semesters already to get into the groove of college, but now because of that, I'm getting scared of releasing the pinched opening of the balloon that is my safe little college life, because that will mean I'm going to get flung out into the real world, zigzagging who knows where with no ideas of my future....alkafdlkjg