love does not begin and end the way we think it does.

Love did not mean anything to the women and men of medieval England. The verb "to love" in Old English was lufian, and the definition of lufian, "to love," is in quotation marks for a reason. There was no direct translation, though that is how the modern word was born. The word meant to cherish and to approve, and these are definitions that do not belong in quotations. There is a special word for "to love God" because religion defined these peoples' existence (after the whole Christianity cross-over thing). Faith, sin, honesty all determined human worth.

Linguistically, I believe that words are arbitrary. Most people would agree with me, though early philosophers would have not. They wanted so terribly to believe that words made sense. They wanted to believe words had derived from some ideal form that determined the shape of letters, the sound of syllables. I think otherwise. So, similarly, I believe that the value we place on words and concepts in our culture is arbitrary, each word with its long and serpentine history of change and refinement and reconstruction. Oftentimes, these histories derive from common literary themes, political climates, and, more recently, advertising and mass media influence.

And so I believe the same is true of love's dominance in the American psyche. Love is a quest? Love is a feeling? Love is an end-point? Love is a springtime rejuvenation, flowers sprouting, leaves shifting from brown to green? All of this language - which we hear so commonly in movies and television, derives ultimately from popular literature, the very heart of written language itself. Just as the media has created popular stances (opposition to Vietnam, preference for stick-thin women), literature has made love the dominant factor in determining human value.

Not much has changed, then, since the Anglo-Saxons dominated England. I mean, the foundations themselves haven't changed. We still rely on dominant cultural narratives to constitute our definition of human value. But if you look at progressive literature, alternatives emerge. Victorian novels like Villette, a book that dared to work against the era's popular narrative of "boy, girl, love, love, love, sexual tension suggested in looks and touches, marriage, happily ever after," love is something else entirely. Love does not even figure into the manifest plot. Instead, Bronte erases love as an easy alternative to self-definition. Lucy, the main character, must forge her own definition of human value, which she settles into a mixture of learning, profession, friendship, and independence.

Perhaps, then, there are a multitude of other ways to define yourself. Perhaps love is an antiquated life goal. Perhaps we should move toward something a little more sophisticated. Of course (and this is unfortunate), this applies mainly to women. Men have been taught since the very first bildungsroman (written by Goethe, in case you were wondering) and even before, that they have alternative life paths to follow, alternative ways to find value in their existences. I think many of them still choose to place love as number one, though. And I know many women who do the same without exception. They move from one man to the next, hoping one of them will complete the puzzle, put it all together, and say, "Look, we did it, it's all over now. Relax." This will never happen, and that's why love as a dominant value is inherently skewed.

I have decided for myself not to define human value in these terms. I have decided for myself to accept another literary perspective that Baldwin created: love is a growing up. The growing up is what is significant, not the love itself. Growing up is being mature enough to realize that love should not define your world, that compromise is necessary, and that, in the end, it's you yourself who decides if your decisions make you happy. You write your own narrative. You write your own ending.

fenetre.

Bonjour. Je m'appelle Carrie. Et vous?
Je suis de Burlingame.
Comment allez-vous? Tres bien, merci.
Qu'est-ce que c'est? C'est une fenetre.

I'm taking French. My Milton professor took pity on me and let me into his class. I'm learning about law and journalism.

This quarter is going to be amazing, I can already tell. This is echoed by my breakfast this morning: whole wheat cinnamon and oatmeal waffles from scratch. Made by moi, with my new waffle maker. I ate them along with a banana, a glass of soy milk, and a cup of English breakfast tea.

My dad is talking about starting a goat farm in Marin or Half Moon Bay. We'd make chevre and have chickens, too. If so, I think I know what I want to do with my life for a little while when I return from Europe.

In addition, I planned to go out to coffee with Amber this afternoon. But this turned into a 2-hour lunch and Westwood shopping session.

Los Feliz this weekend yayyyy.

close my eyes.

Books to read:

• The Namesake
• 2666
• Women and Place series
• Unaccustomed Earth
• The World Without Us

Tomorrow is my long trip back to Los Angeles. I'm actually looking forward to it this time around.

My kittens keep coming into my room, looking up at me, and meowing. Then they walk over to my packed bags and fall on them and look at me with big, wide eyes. I feel awful that they are probably one of the things I'll miss most about being here.

Realizing how close "the rest of my life" has become.

The doctors confirmed that I have pre-cancerous cells growing... in my body... right now. That those cells will change into cancer ("you have a long time. you are young," they say) within 10 years. I say this on my blog not to be sensational but to enlighten the series of entries that is sure to follow about how my entire perspective on life is changing. Has changed. Within the last 24 hours. A lot of things seem less important than they did a few days ago, including holding onto a relationship that was never worth my time in the first place.

I'm not sure when I will get to write again (because the quarter is starting, I'm reuniting with friends, making plans, going to be on the East side of LA for a little while), so I will just say now that I have re-defined what it is to have value as a human being. I will explain this in the future, but for now, I must sleep. Long day tomorrow.

making sense.

Los Angeles has been both wonderful and confusing for me this year, but at the end of the day, it's usually sunny. So I make do. Last night, watching the fireworks, I felt I wanted a change so badly that I know that the change itself will be tangible.

And so my resolutions are as follows:

• Graduate summa cum laude with college and departmental high honors (this one's a stretch)
  
• Run 2-3 times per week
• Walk to class from Brentwood each day
• Make more friends like Zach
• Plan a spring break trip
  
• Find a part-time job
• Have more friends to L.A. to visit
• Continue being honest with the people who matter
• Continue getting rid of those who don't
• Finish thesis and present/publish it
• Move to Europe and have a life worth writing a novel about
  

I am looking forward to break being over so I can start taking my French classes and get done with my thesis (which will happen this quarter!... in about 10 weeks)

all that is faithful.

There are some things better left unnoticed. Like a flash of a piece of paper containing poems. Containing poems you read so long ago it hurts to think how innocent you were then. There are some things that you should just let go. When you realize that all of the crumpled pieces of paper filled with broken words - emulating those poets - add up to nothing, nothing, not anything at all, you also know it's hopeless. All the dreams of new apartments in big cities, putting up wallpaper, and laughing and crying while the light from sun-drenched window panes projects your happy faces out into the street.

When these times come, as they often do, you sit and you think of your past. You think of your old L.A. bedroom on a warm, gray night, the wind blowing the curtains and the door rattling against its frame. You wish you had not been so final. You wish you could have avoided the tears and the philosophical conversation altogether. You knew you were falling for him when you had that conversation about James Agee and As I Lay Dying and the meaning of words themselves. You could point to it and smile, looking at your best friend.

It is midnight, the day before the new year, and you think to yourself: it may be a cliche, but 2009 is a new number. You get to turn the page now. Throw away the gifts. Throw away the empty compliments. Throw away how he chose one path and you tried in vain to follow him. Let it go. Let it pass. Let it fall. Let it drown. And once that weight is lifted, you will thrash to the surface, I promise. If that isn't the truth, then life is nothing but an empty mess of experiences.

You walk through the book store. It's three days. Three days until the countdown. A volume of Susan Sontag's journal, plain and nondescript, catches your eye. She says learning has clear and distinct purposes. She says writing is about egotism. She says to you, with the physicality of the pieces of paper in front of you, that it's okay for you to embrace the world of learning and scholarship.

You think of this for days, you think of Susan Sontag. You think of photography and forms and shapes and shadows and you wish everything were a matter of form. For if it were, the new year would mean nothing this year, as it has meant nothing every other year to you. Instead, you understand that this is different. You must embrace it. If you do not, you will become what he thinks of you. You will become a secondary character in your own story. You are better than that. You are better than him.

Please, do not. Please, take a cue from Bronte and all those anti-Romantics.

You flip through the pages. You find it:

Look up into the light of the lantern.
Don't you see? The calm of darkness
is the horror of Heaven.

We've been apart too long, too painfully seperated.
How can you bear to dream,
to give up watching? I think you must be dreaming,
your face is full of mild expectancy.

I need to wake you, to remind you that there isn't a future.
That's why we're free. And now some weakness in me
has been cured forever, so I'm not compelled
to close my eyes, to go back, to rectify--

The beach is still; the sea, cleansed of its superfluous life,
opaque, rocklike. In mounds, in vegetal clusters,
seabirds sleep on the jetty. Terns, assassins--

You're tired; I can see that.
We're both tired, we have acted a great drama.
Even our hands are cold, that were kindling.
Our clothes are shattered on the sand; strangely enough,
they never turned to ashes.

I have to tell you what I've learned, that I know now
what happens to the dreamers.
They don't feel it when they change. One day
they wake, they dress, they are old.

Tonight I am not afraid
to feel the revolutions. How can you want sleep
when passion gives you that peace?
You're like me tonight, one of the lucky ones.
You'll get what you want. You'll get your oblivion.

- Louise Gluck, "Night Song."

You put it down. You say what you've been dreaming of. You make your resolutions.

why, sir, it's (almost) christmas day.

Tomorrow is Christmas, and I feel so fortunate to have so many family members and friends around me. I am very lucky, I know that.

Things accomplished so far this break:

• Going to Half Moon Bay
• Visiting people in Berkeley
• Finally visiting Solano Ave.
• Not writing any of my thesis
• Taking lots of photographs
• Catching up with the girls
• Re-evaluating my friendship with the guys
• Santa Cruz
• Parties
• Fewer bars than I'd like
• Almost finishing a book, though not really
• Baking, cooking, stirring, things of that nature
• Feeling oddly broken-hearted again but never able to settle on whether I'm happy or whether this is the most cruel thing anyone has ever done to me
• Making plans
• Free Its-It and Guittard samples
• Thinking the rest of my life will never ever exist-- it's just this. forever. so pinning anything on this is just wishful thinking.
  
• Planning nature hikes that never happen because it will never stop raining
  

comeback.

Feel like I've lost a large part of myself. Going to Berkeley and Albany tonight to make up for it.

branches scattered on the concrete.

Last night, Greg asked me what I'm doing for feminism. What's my part in trying to right the wrongs of gender dichotomies? Well, I'm not exactly sure. Don't you think that other women counteract any progress you make by conforming to everything you fight against?, he presses. Yes. Yes, I couldn't agree more. I also think I have counteracted a lot of my own progress over time, but I have tried very hard to work towards a stronger version of myself:

falling over someone not worthy of my intellect or thoughtfulness, being shallow, subscribing to cosmogirl, reading Us Weekly with my mom, watching MTV every so often (I tell myself it's from a critical perspective, but sometimes I watch for plot points on The Hills), worrying about my future family, making life decisions based on men (we've all done it, but we can promise to never do it again), liking Beyonce, seeing Scarlett Johansson as my early-college idol, laughing a little too hard at that guy's jokes, falling for British guy, falling for co-workers, not writing enough in my diary, and so on.

There is something in me that tells me that all of this is somehow not completely incompatible with feminism, however. How can we reject an entire social setup, an entire cultural foundation and expect to find a suitable place for gender identities in America? Gender upheaval at this point in history is just not going to happen. I try to work hard and make plans that are not based on advertising or the media. I try to make goals that satisfy my own personal ambitions. I write and I write and I write and I hope it makes sense to someone out there. But I think there has to be some line we can create to help us judge when it is okay to conform. Then again, over thinking this whole thing is doomed to be the female condition if we keep looking at it this way. So I will stop here.

And, in closing, I would like to point out that the least feminist thing that any woman can do is to envy and hate other women before knowing them and understanding their circumstances. This does not apply to haters of Angelina Jolie. Does no one remember she is fucking insane? Not a feminist icon, thank you very much.

sunny and cold.

I apologize for the recent disappearance. My life devolved into reading, studying, watching re-runs of Top Chef, and Christmas shopping for a few days.

But now I am home again, sitting beside my kittens, who are currently licking each other's heads.

This break, I plan on escaping to Portland, OR and going up to the city a lot. My best friend, Marie, is home from 6 months in Spain, and it's been so eye-opening hearing all of her stories from abroad.

In other news, riots have broken out all over Athens. I wonder if that will make it a good time or a bad time for me to teach kids English. Apparently, it all stems from economic divisions in Greece, which I suppose I can relate to quite well. But what if the kids rebel one day and beat me up and then the police arrest me and then I go to jail and then my life becomes a story of an innocent American abroad, jailed at the behest of the Greek government, wishing I had just chosen Ireland after all? Oh gosh, what if?

I saw Slumdog Millionaire last night. That movie was just a lot of fun. And the two little boys just broke my heart. And now if someone would sit through Nothing Like the Holidays with me, that would just be very nice.

a short history.

My sleeping schedule is fucked, I can't stop thinking about the British guy in my English class, I have paper upon paper to write, must study at some point, cannot wait until Sunday, cannot wait to move to Europe, dreading going home for Christmas and wishing I had the money to travel, eating an apple, flipping through photographs, thinking about the pizza and the car and the secrets I didn't mean to tell him, glad the quarter is almost at an end, wanting to go to Cambridge for my M.A. but like American lit too much, tired of disliking people who aren't worth my time thinking about, turning around and thinking of last night and feeling my stomach turn sour with good-byes and moving ons and perhaps you'll wish we never said anything at all.