An introduction of sorts

Hello all.

Here I am about to enter the world of blogging. I must admit that I am not that familiar with blogging and its culture, assuming that it has one. I only have recently read a few blogs, and infrequently at that. Regardless, I have always fantasized about writing and sharing my writing with the world-at-large. I used to dream of writing novels when I was younger, and I wrote many a short story that my mother said she liked. I wanted to be a writer and a journalist for a large chunk of my childhood. Part of the reason I felt this was because I felt like I needed to have an answer when adults asked me what I wanted to do when I grew up, and that sounded better to me than saying I wanted to be a fireman. It was also partly because I read voraciously---the Ann Arbor Public Library and the original Borders (when Borders was simply a small bookstore on State Street) were my favorite places to be as a child. Of course, I followed these childhood dreams and grew up to become an opera singer.

My boyfriend, Jeremy, has on many an occasion told me that to write, one must be brave enough to get a first draft down on the page, even if it’s full of shit content, poor grammar usage, spelling errors and is completely unintelligible. I guess all journeys have to start somewhere. So, hier bin ich.

Thank you for tuning in. I am not sure why it is that I feel compelled to record some of my thoughts and experiences and share them with the public. Maybe it is because I come from a generation of people obsessed with things like Sex and the City and Six Feet Under, and we struggle and strive to find meaning in our lives. Maybe it is because I am attention starved because of the emotional scarring of my friendless, outcast pre-teen experience, and I am still desperately searching for someone to care about my life. Maybe I am desperately searching for meaning in my life, and the way that I’ll know my life has meaning is when I perceive that other people care about it. Maybe I am just trying to fill the vast amounts of time I spend alone traveling. Maybe I’m just following my dreams. I have no idea---I’ll be sure to ask my therapist at our next session, though.

In the last English class I took at the University of Michigan, we explored children’s literature from the end of the 19^th century (works like Alice and Wonderland and The Light Princess) and how it influenced/related to the Modernist movement in English Literature around the beginning of the 20^th century. It was one of two of the best and most fascinating classes that I took at that institution (the other being a 4 person seminar on Handel’s London operas…don’t judge). We read amazing Modernist works of literature like Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man, To the Lighthouse, The Importance of Being Earnest, as well as Post-Modernist works like Tom Stoppard’s play Travesties. Our professor---a small, bookish woman who wore wire-rimmed glasses and refused to take calls during West Wing---described the Modernists as people who felt that life was bewildering---writers who felt like there was a “Truth” or meaning missing from their experience. Their art was an effort to dig for that “Truth”, that missing meaning. She described Post-Modernists as artists who had ultimately decided that missing “Truth” didn’t exist at all, but just kept digging anyway. Then she asserted that there really was no difference between Modernists and Post-Modernists, which stumped the classroom full of 21-year-old students stressed and confused about how to get good grade in her class. As I sit here and ponder my compelling urge to write and share it with you all, and I wonder which camp I fall into---Modernist or Post-Modernist? In the end, does it even matter? Is there a difference? Again, I have no idea. I, myself, was one of those stumped 21-year-olds desperate for a good grade. Maybe I’ll discover something profound on this journey. I probably will, only to have a great epiphany and then come to understand that it is not the great realization it was, because I have found a more profound, greater “Truth”. Then that epiphany will be undermined, too. It’s a vicious circle---all very Stephen Dedalus.

I have no idea how often I will update this, although I hope that I will do it with some sort of regularity. I just want to have subject matter that is meaningful to me and that I really care to write about. I don’t want to just update this with trite and pseudo-witty observations on life for the sake of having an entry. That would be boring and contrived. I’m not boring and contrived, am I?

Again, thanks for reading this, if you’ve made it this far down the page. Assuming I get over my fear that people will think me stupid, boring, trite, contrived, ineloquent, clumsy, inarticulate, offensive, poorly educated, narcissistic, and vapid, I’ll have something else (perhaps meaningful) to share in the near future.

Until then, peace be with you.