Living the (s)Low Life

So, what’s new in my mundane little world? Not much, really. Just the usual round of house and work failure. I’m really beginning to worry about my work ethic. I never seem to achieve very much during the day and am constantly wasting my time checking email and day-dreaming. They didn’t hire me for this, that’s for sure. I keep waiting for the bomb to drop since I really do have a ton of work. I just never seem to be very motivated for some reason. I don’t know if it’s related to my physical well-being or something, or if there’s anything realistic I can do except periodically shock myself with an electric prodder.

Interesting things that have happened:

Well, Yorgo successfully defended his dissertation on Tuesday. That was kind of amazing. He came home resplendent in a Dolce & Gabbana suit, and a few of us drank to his accomplishment. I say a few, because there are certain members in my house who just don’t seem to be very thrilled about such minor things as becoming a PhD…I don’t know. Even Reza and Yorgo are very lukewarm about it. Mostly I think they’re tired of being in Princeton for so long, bitter about the lack of immediate job prospects, and view their defense as having been nothing so much as a formality. The only ones in the house excited about it are yours truly and Christoph. Vanessa’s kind of into it, but she often spends half her week working in the city, so she’s a little more detached from our daily round of excitement. Still, we all tentatively agreed to gather on Wednesday night to celebrate and have a house meeting (always a bad idea as someone inevitably gets upset -- it’s terribly Real World), and I even bought champagne for the occasion. At 8pm Reza came down and grandly announced that he was going out to dinner with Yorgo and Luis (a friend) and that if, when they got back, the majority of the house was around, we could then celebrate. I rarely feel the urge to murder someone in cold blood, but...

Anyway, I was kind of annoyed by the time they came back and it was clear they didn’t want to be a part of our celebration. So Christoph took me for a drive and a walk around campus, which was really nice. He’s surprisingly easy to talk to given the fact that we’re so different in mindset and approach. He’s very much a guy’s guy, but he’s also incredibly fastidious about things that I could care less about, like having place mats and always eating a salad in accompaniment to any meal. Bizarre. But we had a really nice time – he showed me around some of the buildings and the radio station where he has his own show on Wednesdays. It’s impressive to see someone take so much initiative. It makes me feel highly apathetic despite grumbling about being busy.

Last night I went into the city to Film Forum to see Masculin Féminin for a second screening (I love love love this movie) with Ling. There’s nothing like seeing a movie that bears so much personal meaning. I even forgot how funny it really is; I always remember it as being something of a protracted existential crisis. But it’s hilarious even in its most melancholy moments. It was kind of like the feeling I got on Tuesday when my American fiction professor recited the opening lines of Lolita: every hair on my body was standing on end, shivering in the ecstasy of the moment, hearing those glorious invocations to “Lo-lee-ta: the tip of the tongue taking a trip of three steps down the palate to tap, at three, on the teeth. Lo. Lee. Ta.” With Godard, you have that same sense of self-conscious lyricism. It helps that I’m infatuated with the protagonist, Paul.

As we were exiting, Ling and I ran into 2 kids from Columbia ’05, both of whom I knew, and neither of whom I particularly wanted to see again. One of them was this gibbering weirdo and the other one! Well! He was the kind of pompous ass you frequently find in English departments across the country. Anyway, I definitely extracted my moment of vengeance when I discovered that he too works in publishing -- only he doesn’t enjoy his job at all and is probably heading to grad school as soon as he can. I reduced him to a quivering puddle of insecurity and self-doubt and blithely sailed out, telling Ling that even English majors (brilliant as we are) must have the occasional self-parodying lapse, of which that kid was totally incapable.

Karmic retribution for my bad attitude came at 11:30 when the dinky lost power and stopped for 5 long minutes in the middle of the forest. One minute I was happily humming along to my iPod Humbert, and the next it felt like Heart of Darkness with the rivets were falling out. But the best part was when I finally got off the train at 11:45 and saw Vanessa and Christoph standing at the station platform, smiling and waiting for me. It was totally one of those cheesy moments when I ran over and hugged both of them and we came back home, drank tea, and swapped silly stories until 1:30. It made me so happy to find them waiting for me, scanning the crowd for their rather tired housemate.

Tonight! I think I’m seeing the new George Clooney flick. Tomorrow night I have dinner with some of my high school friends in the city, which I’m really looking forward to. With the exception of my gone-to-seed work ethic, life isn’t dreadful at the present moment. Though I think a storm is brewing on the house-front. My god, it’s practically Elsinore.