thursday's train of thought

sonic textures: listening to godspeed on an incredibly bleak and rainy thursday morning may have been a bit much, but i kind of enjoy the kind of sombre trance-like transcendent feeling i get from this particular tape. i love the way everything becomes more surreal with this sort of a soundtrack, including my utterly boring daily commute (usually the only excitement is discovering a new tree growing in the ditch or seeing mushrooms popping up along the sidewalk, or dodging the minefield of big nasty slugs).

my reflection upon leaving was that in the south, family IS everything, and we southerners do make a big deal about it and take the whole notion a lot more seriously than people out here do. (I think people move out west to escape their families, not become closer to them). Westerners (by this I mean people from California, Oregon, and other adjacent states) seem to subscribe to a sort of rugged individualism that we southerners find rather questionable. In fact it is not socially acceptable to decline to participate in the guanxi-like system that you belong to in the south, where your identity is based more on how you know people and fit in to existing order, than on whatever merits you may have personally. Your family (which in a sense includes far more than your immediate blood relatives) IS your support network, and "wanting to go it alone" or "stand on your own two feet" is a rather odd notion that defies the logic of the culture. This is why, my dears, that family is such a big deal, but some people can't stand it and find it restricting...and i guess that's why they move to california in the first place.

Today was the first day of class...well it woulda been the second if i had felt up to venturing out on Monday...but anyhow it seems like it might be fun, and i don't think she'll give us a chance to fall asleep. Now if I can just get motivated to do all the reading that's required... this may be where audiobooks might have to be utilized...it's hard to get motivated to read anything academica after a day at work.