Testing

So I've got this test coming up called the Qualifying Exam. Basically, it's where they test my ability to withstand grad school/doctoral pressures by quizzing my critical analysis on six books from various times and places of Hispanic literature. Is it okay that there is some minor indignation that I have to take this? Aren't I smart enough that you can see I'll be fine? My older, wiser friends who have passed through this exam say it'll be a breeze for me, and I've believed them up until this point, some two weeks before the exam. What if it's not a breeze for me? What if I lock up and am suddenly inable to communicate thoughts in Spanish, or worse, have no thoughts and opinions on whatever I'm being asked about? Other times I shrug off the responsibility of studying and play Final Fantasy until I have a motion-sickness headache. 'Cause that's a little more rewarding.

Lowered Expectations

Months and months (years?) away from this blog have really changed things. Not necessarily changed things within me, just with the world in general. Is the whole 'blog' thing over? Grandmas have blogs, babies have blogs, dogs have blogs (Give me a minute, I'm still warming up to this and as such jokey blog banter may be a little off). Everybody has a thought and opinion, and it's all on the internet. How are my internal ramblings better/different/more entertaining than hers, his or its?

If you're still there and still reading, keep checking back. I don't have an answer for that last question, but I'm willing to take the trip to find out.

Critical Thoughts

Why can't I just get paid to be a critic? Because apparently that's all I do anyway.

Science of Sleep

awesome and beautiful and mystifing and blah blah blah. and how can you go wrong with Death Cab for Cutie in your trailer?

Me, Cheering

So I haven't heard if I was on TV in the end of it all, but I don't really know anyone who watched the full Macy's broadcast. I mean, there's a few problems with it: who's going to sit through Nick Lachey and Lionel Richie's pre-taped "live" performances? Liza Minelli was radically insane, so her special taping was so entertaining my sides hurt from the belly laughs. Another problem is fireworks on TV? I know the camera was on me a few times, or I like to imagine that it was, so I waved my little American flag dutifully (can you imagine?) and beamed ecstatically at the fireworks. Surprisingly enough, there came a point where I couldn't tell what was feigned excitement and giddiness and what was the real thing, shining through the ironic posing.
Now there's something to chew on.

Ties

I guess I've got a pretty weird viewpoint. Growing up, people would ask us what ethnic background we were, and they inevitably meant, "You're not exactly white. What's up?" It was South Georgia, and this was before the huge influx of immigrant workers made general Hispanic/Latino sightings more common. So as kids we would point to my Grandmother, indicating that all non-white abnormalities could and should be pinned to her genetic influence. Truth is, I kind of liked being different. And when people would ask what my Father's background was, I would scratch my head. What am I supposed to say? White? Because of the close proximity of something real and traceable, i.e. Nanny's mishmash accent, we never counted anything else. Who cares if my great-great grandmother was German, or of German stock? It didn't affect me, I never knew her, we don't speak German or didn't grow up with weinerschnitzel and apfelstrudel. But I did feel that way about my Puerto Rican side; I grew up feeling more different than anything else, made to recognize my half-breed otherness by overly inquisitive full-blood Caucasians on the playground. "What are you?" was lobbed at me often enough to keep it on the backburner of my mind, slowly boiling some kind of racial identity soup with scary fish heads in it (don't ask me, it's some kind of Puerto Rican recipe).

Cut to fifteen years later, and I'm still trying to figure all of that out. Ethnically speaking, that is. What does it mean to be Puerto Rican or Southern, American or Spanish? How do you define those things? Is it where you grew up, your DNA, where your heart lies? It's a small non-joke that I always say that I feel more Spanish sometimes than American. Maybe it's that same desire to be the different kid, he who does not fit in. Shrug. Live on foreign soil long enough and you begin to actively critique certain things that always seemed standard. One of the worst moments in my life came from returning from Spain for the first time ever and immediately attending a Fourth of July celebration. In the midst of all those upturned faces staring at the exploding night sky, I was amazed. Where did all my patriotism go? I could feel the fingers pointing up at me and that anxious question come back: "What are you?"

So it's kinda funny that I'm going to the Macy's fireworks tonight, huh? But I ain't waving no flag.

Summer in the City

I guess you could say that music has always played an integral part in my life. I can remember the theme songs to so many television shows that have long passed (which in truth may be a testament more to the mind-altering power of television than music), and I can remember hours of dramatically acting out scenes set to the more tear-jerking songs of my youth. I remember the love theme to Karate Kid III, making up scenes around the wordless melodies and playing them out in my head over and over. A more obscure treat from the Karate Kid soundtrack was the reworking of The Loving Spoonful's song "Summer in the City." The lyrics are semi-unimportant now, but it's mainly stuff about how hot it is in the City (can there be any doubt as to what City gets it's own capitalization?) in the summer, and how things are in general in New York. They complain. People walk around, it's gritty and horrible. Then the chorus kicks in, there's a bit of a chuckle in their voices, and they say, "but at night it's a different world" and, just like that, you know that that's how they like it.

And that's what life is like here, pretty much. Every movie you've ever seen, every song that's ever been written about it, New York is all of those things. It's trashy and dirty, the subway and people smell bad, it's hot and sticky, but it's beautiful at night, the way the city lights up across the bay. You find your oasis, you create your own niche in this place. There's a heartbeat to this place, and you understand how somebody can write a song about how hot and muggy and just awful it all is but never want to leave it.