I suppose the title of this blog is still relevant; I am still in college. I am enrolled at Cypress for fall, and I am currently registered in a one unit P.E. class. We played ultimate Frisbee today. My team lost, which means we had to do 50 jumping jacks, 30 lunges, and 25 body builders, which are some sort of torturous things where you jump back and forth between a crouch and a plank position. Our team was made up of a lot of small people who tended to shy away from the Frisbee instead of catch it, plus the other team had a defender who is 6'3. I hate losing.
I should be working very hard to get into graduate school, but for some reason I keep letting things get in the way. The New Not-So-Great Depression is actually depressing. I feel really uncreative and unmotivated. I'm being really...I don't know. Whiny. Pathetic. Weenieish. Grouchy. Lazy. Scared. I feel so tired. I know that I go through waves of depression, especially when I don't have any imposed structure in my life. I've been thinking about returning to hair for the mean time, but I would hate to have to leave it again if I got accepted into a program. Not that I would overly miss the work, it's just that I would hate letting people down. People get very attached to their hairdressers, and it's a pain having to say goodbye. But money is money. It's so obscene.
Depression is, among other things, frightening. The psychological kind, I mean. There are so many things that I feel so very passionate about, but when I'm depressed it's as if they all lose their meaning and vibrancy. I get scared to return to an essay I've been working on when I'm depressed. What if I edit it according to my terrible mood? What if I decide to change direction on a whim? I have to hope that the evidence supporting my original ideas is strong enough to override my emotional flights of fancy. Maybe I just need to read something new. Sometimes that does the trick.
I did watch Chinatown and Easy Rider recently. Not exactly pick me ups, but so good. Chinatown is the finer film, if you ask me, but Easy Rider has its charms. I think I like Jack Nicholson's acting better in Easy Rider. I don't think Nicholson has a great range, and I don't know if I believe that he truly inhabits a character as much as takes you on thrill ride through that character's possibility, but he is glorious onscreen. I wish I had more to say about either film, but, if you couldn't tell, I'm kind of short on words these days. I loved seeing John Huston in Chinatown, and was reminded that I love film noir set in Los Angeles, like in Sunset Boulevard, Double Indemnity, and L.A. Confidential. With Easy Rider, well, I guess I had a harder time enjoying the film, as it is kind of a sad commentary on America. I suppose I enjoyed Peter Fonda the most, and his ridiculous but charming character, Captain America. His crying scene on the lap of that giant Madonna is pretty intense, made even more so when I watched the DVD's documentary and found out that Denis Hopper made him do that scene, even though Fonda had lost his own mother to suicide at the age of ten.
Powerful.
As I was watching the opening to Easy Rider, Todd wandered into the living room and said, over the now familiar Steppenwolf biker song, "Born to be Wild": Well. That's really all you need to see.
Looks like unhealthy cynicism is catching.
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