imaginary turf battles

So we had to turn in our first creative writing pieces tonight by midnight (via email to everyone in the class). Although it would take a lot of ego-stroking by classmates for me to try putting it up in this space, I'm still happy with how it turned out. It seems to me that a lot of what is worth working on in the class is balancing the need to create a voice/explain my subject position while at the same time avoiding overpersonalization of the type that I look back and see consistently crop up in my other writing. Although I'm sure all of my fragile, amateur impressions of nonfiction will be reshaped and realigned as of the first class meeting, it seems to me that the point of public writing is to, without obscuring the primacy of one's perceptions, brush the dirt off a little shard of truth. And let's be honest: most of the shards I find and dust off are not going to be original, brilliant discoveries. And that's fine. Right?

Well, let's just say that I read through the other submissions from the class as soon as I sent mine in. In general, the quality of the writing only made me more excited for the class--both the ideas and the syntax/diction/voice were generally exciting and good. Unfortunately, at one point, someone else's essay ended up in territory that was surprisingly close to some ideas covered in mine. My first instinct was to bristle, even though most of her writing was about something else entirely; immediately afterwards, I tried to rationalize how the two ideas were actually distinct and different and nobody would even notice any similarity. Then I got embarrassed about the whole emotional upheaval and closed the document. Looking back on it now with a couple hours' perspective, that was embarrassing. If, as I suggest above, the point of my writing is to get at some kind of truth, it is a good sign that the two ideas looked like each other. It lends a reassurance to my questions about the veracity of my thoughts. Right?

I just don't understand why it was so difficult (painstaking, even) to convince myself of this. Did my education really place so much emphasis on creativity/uniqueness that to explore, entirely by coincidence, the same territory as a classmate and peer so scary? I'm not sure; my sin may just be too much pride in my intellectual production when, in reality, I'm no better off (and often worse off) than the people around me. More positively, maybe I just set the bar so high for myself that I wanted writing I felt good about but also writing that other people felt good about. I see this strong need for validation cropping up in other areas of my life, so it really shouldn't come as a shock that I treat my writing with a defensiveness most reserve for politics. Whatever the cause is, though, I can't help but feel like it was nurtured by years spent in an academic culture that I already have some serious beef with, but which I'm paying for the privilege to participate in. Anyone's ethical priorities can be screwed around with a big enough lever, and for me it seems like $15000 in debt and even larger sums of my parents' money provides enough guilt to get full-on buy-in.

another stall: classes I'm taking, thinking about learning

College courses, like so many other things, have become an intrinsically and impossibly tricky complicated part of my life. I feel weird about the realization that I judge courses as 'good' or 'bad' before the end of the first hour. I feel weird that I'm a math major, but I haven't taken a single math class all year. I feel weird that I really really enjoy hearing what my science-major friends are working on (dan's weird polymer, katie's immunodeficient mice, etc etc), but that I've conspicuously avoided actually taking any science in college up until my last semester (which is a cop-out class I'll elaborate on more below). I feel weird that, in only taking one class for either of my majors (math and history) this semester, I'm looking forward to my schedule much more than any sched I've had in a long time; I'm taking two english classes, too, which is another department I've never really given a shot before. I guess a lot of these second-guessings amount to concerns about the content/meaning of my education: what the hell ARE the liberal arts, and have I adequately studied them? What did I just take out thousands of dollars in debt to do? Did I come out of this experience with things that I couldn't have gotten elsewhere? and so on. Senior Doubt, the psycho- to Senioritis' -somatic.

Anyway, right now it looks like I'll be taking four classes in addition to my math thesis and history Senior Comprehensive (whatever that is--they never really told me clearly and certainly haven't gotten in touch since the semester began). It's a lot, but I draw comfort both from the utter craziness with which others surround themselves (I'm looking at you, steph) and from the serenity/simplicity other friends have achieved by refusing to fall victim to the overachiever epidemic at this institution. It allows me to feel like I'm somewhere in the middle, which MUST have some kind of validity, right? It's like a compromise. And now, on to the classes:

-Paleontology: I'm super-excited about it, but I'm also well aware that it's a cop-out science class. It doesn't even have a lab, for chrissake. Also, objectively, I feel like I know a lot of what we're covering already on some level. The class is more about geology, climatology, and the biosphere than about dinosaurs, but I enter the room happily brandishing a full reading of John McPhee's Annals of the Former World and an affinity for 'trivia' (random facts) that allowed me to retain some of it. On the plus side, the professor is this young guy with enviable intellectual curiosity who bothered to learn the names of all 50 students between last Wednesday and last Friday. His first two lectures are based around The Geology of the Hometowns of People Taking this Class, information he only found out last week, which lectures utilize some of the best Powerpoints I've seen in a college class (which, again, he could only have made since that first class). This probably means he's 1. committed to what would otherwise seem a cop-out science class and 2. completely crazy. I like it. And I know I'd feel horribly guilty if I ever missed class.

-Africa since 1800: the last class required for my history major. It's a little bit of a cop-out too, since I basically had a choice of a survey/lecture and a seminar and took the survey. I have no defense for this.

-Asian American Literature/Cultural Criticism: my first Asian American studies course. The reading list looks amazing, I've heard great things about the prof, and I feel like it's almost a necessary part of my own sort of identity-definition journey. To some extent, the fluidity and in-betweenness of being hapa gives me a chance to look at things like Asian American race theory both as an insider (to whom some aspects may apply/have a personal connection to me) and as an outsider (if I wanted, I could pass for white-but-slightly-exotic or so; at least, that's what I hear from enough white people that I think it has some credibility). At any rate, interesting, valuable, maybe even necessary. I'm glad I'm taking it.

-Writing the World: creative writing, nonfiction. I can't even explain how exciting this is. The writing I've done in this space veered sharply away from The World once I got back from abroad (and I'm not sure that's where it was very often in the first place), and I'd like to see it become something interesting to people, rather than just interesting to people who want to know how I'm feeling about a bunch of stuff. I don't think I'll publish my coursework verbatim here, but I may play with ideas here, or I may revise stuff from class and post it. We'll see how the class goes, and then by extension how I feel about writing in general. Hopefully I'll be so motivated to write about stuff every day that I'll just post most of it here in addition to whatever gets turned in to the class. Ha.

stalling: stuff I cooked over break

Sorry, Grant, that I didn't make Jambalaya, but I did have a chance to use the rents' kitchen/grocery budget to do a little cooking over break. Now that I'm back at school, and far from any kind of well-stocked kitchen, I thought I'd give myself a little dash of food-related nostalgia.

-I tried turkey enchiladas one night, because turkey cutlets were on sale. Cooking with the adobo (the sauce in which some varieties of chiles are canned) added a lot, but the peppers themselves would have been WAY too hot for my family. Broiling them did a pretty good job of getting the flavors into the tortillas, although if I did it again I'd add a bunch of cheese or something to the filling to try to keep the turkey a little more moist.

-I gave pad se iew (or however you anglicize it) a try one night. This turned out badly, mostly due to the noodles. We found some frozen "homestyle" rice noodles (not packaged as being specific for asian food or anything), and after thawing they just bled off a ton of starch--I don't know if I got it all rinsed off. Then I undercooked 'em. Oh, and I just sort of made up a lot of the specialized ingredients. And we were out of cornflour. But other than that, they were ok, I guess. I think I'm better off trying to make curry if I try Thai food again.

-I made pesto-stuffed chicken breasts another night. These turned out pretty well, if not particularly memorable. Admittedly, we just bought pesto rather than making it, since the food processor isn't a central part of our kitchen. I discovered that pounding chicken with the flat of a cleaver is really enjoyable on some visceral level, even if they didn't end up thin enough to roll the way I sort of thought they would.

-At one point, we found this amazing deal on an absolutely huge package of pork cutlets, so I decided to make ton katsu with some bok choy as a side. We put out this huge serving platter with a layer of shredded lettuce, and the pork literally in layers on top, there was so much in that package. Hammering pork cutlets with a cleaver was again a highlight, but they flattened more evenly this time. It turns out that, with the panko-style breadcrumbs (secured the last time my mom was in a town with Trader Joe's), it's really really easy to make tonkatsu that looks and tastes like it's supposed to. It would have been an all-around win if I hadn't made so much--all the leftovers made the meal feel like less of a success somehow. The bok choy also turned out well--we didn't find baby bok choy, so we just made do with trimming and cutting up normal-sized bok choy, which, after the braising, turned out just as tender.

-Using recipies from our Family Cookbook (something my mom had never previously told me about), Steph's mom, and some Martin Yan thing (I think), we made potstickers from scratch-minus-the-wrappers. We got this really amazing fresh shiitake mushrooms from an Asian grocery store near where we always get dim sum, and I think they added a lot to the filling. Reminding my sister that the potstickers had mushrooms in them also gave her pause, which was a fun lesson in being a more adventurous eater.

-In the past week, I got the stomach flu, which sucked. As I was recovering, I tried to minimize my meat intake, especially red meat, since it's so hard to digest. This happened to coincide fortuitously with our purchase the previous week of some portobella caps, which I then stuffed with shrimp and such. After broiling, they had a great balance of flavor and texture. We also had some pasta for that meal, with the extra shrimp, artichoke hearts, and stewed tomatoes in the sauce. I don't know that the portabellas were enough to stand on their own as a meal.

-I made this really really crazy complicated caramelized salmon dish, the recipe for which I got from a friend (whose family, I believe, got it from a restaurant). The carmelization worked ok, I guess--I rolled the salmon in sugar and pepper, and then seared it off--although the texture wasn't quite what I was expecting, it didn't taste overly sweet or anything. The other exciting part was the beurre blanc sauce, made with lemongrass and green onions. Maybe I had a lackluster understanding of chemistry as a kid, but reducing sauces still fascinates me, especially the way all of the complexities of the butter, vinegar, cream, lemongrass, rice wine, and white wine came together and mellowed each other out as they cooked down. It was fun, but an awful lot of work. Also, I have a lot of trouble with pieces of fish falling apart in the pan as I cook them. That's what practice is for, I guess.

My mom and I also made some other stuff that was pretty good--prime rib, something with tuna, something with halibut, I'm sure some other chicken and pork stuff, but I don't have it right in front of me, so I can't remember exactly. It was a good break, food-wise, in any event.

oh right

Considering the enormous amount of productivity that has not emerged from my month off, I'm not surprised that my originally blistering pace of writing for th[is] public domain didn't hold up. Basically, I had a math thesis I was going to write, but haven't, I have some movies I was going to watch, books I was going to read, and skiing I was going to do that didn't happen, and I have some dinners I didn't cook. But these things should not obscure the reading I did do, the dinners I did cook, and the bars I did go to with friends. (Note that I didn't mention the thesis in the latter sentence) Anyway, I choose to believe that the reason my achievements measure up so poorly to my expectations is that I really did need a break. Also, it snowed a lot and I had the stomach flu, both of which led to my sleeping away lots of otherwise productive days. Which is not to say that sleeping in is intrinsically bad--if I actually felt that way, I'd like to think I'd sleep in a lot less. It just happens to have cut into the time I had for other things. Like things I kinda needed to do.

Oh, and I have some thoughts spurred a little by the stomach flu, a little by some stuff I read, a little by talking to friends doing bio research, but they aren't quite ready. Also, they aren't, like, gross, or anything--the stomach flu fits in as more of an abstract idea than a visceral process.

In the meantime, I had a couple quick observational things: first, I went to the National Western Stock Show on monday (featured event: professional bull-riding), and I remembered how much I enjoy it. The way public voices around the event talked about "preserving the old ways" led me to a comparison of our celebration of western ranch culture and the movie "A Prairie Home Companion," which venerates a classical Scandinavian midwest. I feel like my feelings about the culture of the Stock Show are incredibly compromised by my place as a fundamentally City Person, but there's so much beauty and tradition touched with sadness in the West as an institution that it's easy to become transfixed by the depiction of a Way of Life while forgetting we watched that bullriding sitting a row above or a row below people who make their living on ranches. Even as the PA announcer made several passing jokes about the "Denver people" mixing in with the authentic National Western participants and I knew they were directed at people like me, I didn't feel like my place there was being contested. Denver, as host city for the Stock Show every year (which makes january days frequently smell like cow regardless of where you are in the city), still has a kind of credibility in that setting. I enjoyed the whole of the stock show, and even though I don't know the last person in my family to farm (a couple generations ago, at least), my nonparticipation didn't make me feel like a total outsider--between what outdoorsiness I have left over from working at REI, the Eagle Scout thing, and just being from Colorado, I felt comfortable at the National Western Complex, which honestly seems a little surprising in retrospect.

We rode the new lightrail line downtown last night; trains on the union station line came every half-hour, even during evening rush hour. I just have to say: that makes NO SENSE. If Denver wants lightrail to really serve as its "world class city" mass-transit, it's gotta step it up.