From the Desk of a Clockwork Automaton

A pizza parlor owned by a cute Greek family owns a lot behind my apartment building. They tore down the chain link fence that separates their lot from the end of my street and the side of our building, maybe sometime in March. Ever since then, the older brother comes out weekday mornings and works on building the new fence. Yes, that's right, I said every morning since March. It's mid July. Is this a fence with laser beams and security cameras? No. It's a chain-ass-link fence. And it's nowhere near done. I'm like Zorba, you should get a job working for the city, your work ethic is perfect for them. Every freaking morning, from like 7-8 he clunks a few cinder blocks together, drills something, hammers this or that. I'd say the fence is maybe almost half done. I guess he figures he'll just keep dragging the job out until eventually it's such a colossal mess that a German guy from next door will come and pay to fix it right. Hey o.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2011/06/25/the_last_act_in_an_irish_tragedy/

Actual FB status from my annoying manager: 

songs that have kept me extra motivated to keep working hard today: Britney's Till the World Ends: Kesha's Blow; Katy Perry's E.T.

This is why I'm leaving

1. a small but significant minority of preppie WASP's who clearly smoke pot (although they would never drink a nice juice because "that stuff is for hippies"--I saw a guy in a tie at a juice bar ordering an ice coffee. Dude, there are six coffee shops on main street, why are you in the juice bar?)
2. grimy, incoherent old burnt out hippies wandering the street
3. yuppie new age hippies driving Subarus in yoga pants
4. angry butch dyke Smith alumnae hippies
5. greasy slack-jawed hipsters with like one dreadlock
6. angry blue collar bikers in American flag t-shirts who think of themselves as super conservative, not because they actually are  (they don't want religious people telling them what to think or super rich corporations getting tax breaks, and compared to real conservatives, are hippies) but because their entire sense of identity is based on "their" town being inevitably taken over by "liberal hippies" they're like Yes, Glenn Beck, 912 Foundation, let's get it on.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z5lXEFdZAmU

Hee hee hee!

Listening to hippies make cutesy references on 4/20 is almost as annoying as listening to rich people whine about taxes on tax day

Happy Passover!

Our roommate A'Nova moved out today, driving across country back to Portland for a new job. I'm sad to see her go, as she's an amazing person, a great friend, and living with her was like having a friend sleepover every day. But my god is it nice to have the place to ourselves. It's not a big apartment, by any stretch of the imagination, and she has a VERY busy social schedule. She stays in touch with people from every scene of her life; high school, college, various jobs, Peace Corps, her large extended family, etc. Her phone buzzes constantly throughout every day from texts from people across the country. People write her letters. I haven't sent or received a letter in twelve years. She always had guests, friends for brunch, book group, her pseudo-boyfriend was over practically every night, etc. I was really starting to feel the lack of privacy. In general it was fine; we were all good about letting each other know when we were going to be away from the apartment for awhile, and it lent a sense of urgency to those hours when we thought we knew for sure we'd have the place to ourselves for awhile. But after awhile I needed to not share space with a friend. The fact that she is an old friend, and that we have two bathrooms, made it fine and most often really fun, to live with a roommate. There's no way we'd get a Criaglist roomie, even thought we can't really afford it btwn the two of us. But whatever. We can't afford anything; we'll find a way to make it work.
I think A'Nova really needs a real home to herself. She's never lived alone, or with a significant other. She grew up in a yurt in the desert with her crazy isolationist hippie parents and her four sisters, all of them with made-up fake Indian names, home-schooled, no social security cards. When she was at Reed, Portland was the longest she'd ever lived anywhere. She's always been in transient homestays, and before she lived with us, she lived in the spare room of another married couple for a year. Now she'll have her own space, have to make all the decisions about furniture, bills, utilities, etc.
Now that she's moved out, we moved our bed into her room and plan to use our old bedroom as a library/office. Her room is smaller, warmer, and much cozier. The big bedroom is better used for reading, exercising, playing music, studying. It's larger, less private, faces the street, etc. It'll be perfect for reading and so on. I've always wanted to have a library in my home, and I plan to get creative with the layout of the space.

I went to a mixer at Tufts this afternoon. I met some interesting and cool people there, but I got the same kind of vibe from it as I got from Harvard, except not at pompous. But just as pampered and lackadaisical. No one I talked to had an apparent sense of urgency. Maybe I'll go here, maybe there. It's just a year of my life! Yeah, and 40+ thousand dollars.
The people I've met at Teach Next Year, by contrast, have put an enormous amount of hope and faith into this. One woman has been the financial aid adviser at university of Michigan for 17 years. She has a masters in criminology and has been coaching young students through the college process, and sees how ill equipped so many of them are. She took the train up to Boston for a week to go on these two interviews. So many people called themselves late bloomers. Many of them failed out of college or dropped out of high school. Not everyone comes from humble beginnings, but every last one of them comes from a place of humility. These are people who have finally found their calling, and need a practical, low-cost route to answer that call.
I don't want to teach because I'm some condescending do-gooder, or plugging a good deed onto my resume. I teach because I have only two great powers--ability to analyze and talk about books, and patience--and I have a great responsibility to use them to help.

The villagers need samurai to help them against the bandits, but they have no gold to offer true samurai. They have nothing to offer but rice. "So find hungry samurai," the village elder suggests. I am a hungry samurai.