Saturday, December 1, 2012
I feel a huge influx of emotions now I feel like Florence Nightingale when she wrote "Cassandra", only not as angry/frustrated/bitter.
It's Friday night and people are out partying, hello people it's 2 weeks to finals why are you all still out partying?????? I can here shouting outside my window now. Someone's shouting, "SAYKO! SAYKO!" I happen to know that that's what they're saying for sure because there is a guy by the name of Ryan Sayko in my class hahahaha.
Today was good, but let's start with the week first.
On Tuesday I was working assiduously on my Women's Studies paper (omg I hope I get an A, I have a really good feeling about my paper this time round) and flipping my textbooks furiously to scour for quotes HAHAHAHA and I had my earphones plugged in and classical music playing cos Hannah decided to, um, whinge over the phone again. I slept at 2 AM.
The next morning I woke up and went for classes as usual. And then after classes ended for the day I was upset about something and sent Michelle a querulous text about it, and when I got back to our room I found Michelle solemn and very serious, which is not like her. "Geoff left, by the way, if you didn't notice. He left at like 12 AM last night," she said. Geoff had stayed over after sending her back to school from Thanksgiving weekend.
"Oh, did he? I thought he left this morning. I didn't realize he left at all last night, and I slept at 2."
"Yeah, well, his mom passed away," she said. AND THEN I FELT SO BAD WHINING ABOUT HOW I HAD GOTTEN AN A- FOR MY ARAB SPRING CLASS. Suddenly my problems seemed inconsequential.
Ok perhaps this is really mean but I didn't have a good impression of Geoff's mom although I had never met her, cos Michelle had told me a little about her. Michelle said she didn't like her, because she would bitch behind people's backs and yet when she sees said people she bitches about she acts ultra friendly to them. And Michelle also recounted an incident when she was at Geoff's house and Geoff's mom was quarreling with her husband (Geoff's dad, that is). And Geoff's mom had yelled at him, "YOU HAVEN'T FUCKED ME IN 17 YEARS!" Ok I know it's rather crude lol but I found it really funny, especially now when I think of Michelle's reaction to that hahahaha. She did like a ghetto finger swag and said, "Way too much info," HAHAHA
And even though Geoff's mom had furiously expostulated with him for not voting for Romney, Michelle said Geoff cried really bad after learning about his mom's death. And now I feel bad for laughing at the antics of a dead person, particularly so because I have never even met said person sigh.
On Thursday Michelle took a short leave of absence from her classes, left campus and returned home to accompany Geoff. I feel sympathetic, but I don't know what to say. "Tell Geoff I'm sorry," I told Michelle, but how is that helpful, really? What else can you say, really?
So everyone, please, when I die, don't cry (lol this sounds rather pompous to say). During my funeral everyone will eat good food and laugh, and it will be a celebration of my life. Hopefully my life would be awesome enough for people to have things to laugh about :-) Oh yes and I would like to be cremated please, and please scatter my ashes into someplace romantic like the ocean WTF.
Back to today. I turned in my 2 papers today, and these are the last pieces of work for these 2 classes (apart from the final exam and take-home essays for final, of course) so in that sense I feel a huge weight lifted off my shoulders. I'm always glad when I finish writing my papers but it's only in the moment when I finally turn them in that the true sense of freedom pervades me.
Today was a peaceful day, and then I took an afternoon nap and had a dream. I'm not going to go into the details of the dream but it was very realistic, like it could really happen in reality. I woke up very very very confused and perturbed.
Walked downtown for dinner with my sister, and then we went to Walmart to shop for stuff. We discussed what our kids would call us in the future LOL my brother's kids would call my sister 大姨, and our kids would call my brother 舅舅. And if not they would call her "Auntie Huining" HAHAHAHAHA. It feels very strange, like somehow we're not very befitting of these titles because they're so adult-like and all! I will turn 18 in 18 days ON THE 18TH (hurhurhur Kelly always told me, "Last year I turned 17 on the 17th!") but I shall insist that I am 17 forever :-)
So as you might have guessed from the start of the post, I have started to read some of Florence Nightingale's writing for English class. We all have images of her being this motherly, gentle and aery figure that corresponds with her appellation "Lady with the Lamp" but after reading about her this preconceived notion I've had of her has been shattered. She was actually racist (I don't know how to go into this without going off on a tangent, so I shall refrain from explaining) and extremely aversive to marriage. As we would expect, she died unmarried. She was so against marriage that she felt a sense of betrayal whenever one of her nurses decided to get married. Reading about her made me feel like she was a 17th century female version of Steve Jobs cos she was a demanding workaholic –
"Florence Nightingale continued to perform staggering amounts of work for the rest of her long life. That any of her colleagues should desire a personal life enraged her. When her Aunt Mai, who had accompanied her to the Crimea and remained with her afterward, wanted to return home to visit her own family, Nightingale broke with her for twenty years. She refused to recognize, when Sidney Herbert was dying, that work was beyond his capacities. When Mary Clarke paid a rare visit to England, Nightingale would not interrupt her daily schedule of work for even a brief visit!"
Introduction to Cassandra, Myra Stark
Sounds like a bitch if you ask me. After reading all of this I feel like she did her work more to gain a sense of achievement that would satisfy herself psychologically, and not really out of of compassion. But admittedly she really did contribute to the advancing the field of nursing.
Ok abrupt end of post because I need to sort out my feelings.
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