Grad school visit

So, last week I visited one of the graduate schools I'm applying to for next fall. Overall, I think the meeting went well. I spoke with two difference faculty members, one of whom is the graduate studies director and the other I think I would like to work with. My conversations with one of the faculty members were interesting but brief. We talked about the interest or lack thereof that most people show in history and in archaeology. Those who are interested in archaeology are often interested on an "Indiana Jones/Tomb Raider" level, because archaeology seems exciting, dangerous, exotic.

The thing is, most people aren't interested in what happens in their own community or in archaeology that relates to their own history. Why are people so distanced from the past? Why is archaeology in "exotic" locales what interests people in it?

Since I'm interested in cultural resource management and public archaeology, these are vital questions. How can one encourage and stimulate not just interest in history and archaeology, but a sense of personal involvement and investment in the past? In cultural resources and preservation? I think the key lies with the fact that traditionally historians and archaeologists are the mediators of the past. The average person feels disconnected from the past because traditionally, she is disconnected from it! There is no personal sense of responsibility for historical, archaeological, or cultural resources. And without that sense of personal investment in preserving or studying the past, without that support.... studying it and preserving it become very challenging.

Potential

Despite the fact that Genie's knowledge of anthropology and archaeology grossly overwhelms my own, I cannot help but be intrigued by the nature of political discourse in this country (the United States). It is probably my academic experience with postmodernism and semiotics that drives me to relentlessly catalogue the real meanings behind throwaway words and off-the-cuff remarks, but it seems those things we say carelessly are those that betray our actual thoughts. Freud thought so, too, but it is quite unpopular in modern circles to mention (or indeed grant a shred of validity to) Freud's psychoanalytic work.

That is, though, a different post.

Reading the back-and-forth of the Republicans' approval of Alito over Democratic objections by the House Judiciary Committee displays a view of the nature of truth that is wholly alien to most of us, but is becoming more familiar--that veracity is simply a matter of striking while the iron is hot. The art of "spin" or image-manipulation is fodder for high concept movies like Wag the Dog, but has yet to really be fabricated into a thoughtful, appropriately experimental work like other films about the broader nature of identity. (I speak now of the inimitable Charlie Kaufman, whose next film I await with breathless abandon.)

I honestly cannot remember who it was that postulated the importance of the truth in a nonliterate society, but I have a feeling it was around the era of Levi-Strauss or, more likely the Scottish philosopher David Hume. The idea is that the notion of the lie prior to the written word was just unheard-of; for societies whose communication relied solely on the verbal, to introduce the unreliability of the word into these societies would engender a massive breakdown. It is a similar thread to the solipsistic paranoia experienced by first-year philosophy majors when they start wondering if Descartes' "brain in a jar" theorem might just have some weight to it, but in this case I feel it is valid.

Well, the majority of the world has been literate for quite some time, and it is the suggestion of some linguistic theorists that the lie only came into effect with the written word. Here you had some account that held locked inside it an air of greater authority and permanence than the spoken account; suddenly, reliance on the verbal alone became unnecessary. If I believed I rightly had more cows than my neighbor, I could reference my tallied lists of cows I made as I led them back from pasture. I now have a record that, in some small manner, appears to prove I am honest.

Of course the problem with vesting the written with authority is the same as assuming the verbal has authority. Seeking to place authority in circumstances we have not empirically witnessed is necessarily an act of faith, but a necessary act of faith that provides the underpinnings of greater society. We have to believe in the relative honesty and authority of some source, or else we become constrained to believe only those things we have sensed directly.

But prior to the written word, can we really suggest there was no such thing as dishonesty? I think the supposition is less that no one ever thought to lie, but simply that lying was so strongly discouraged that people just did not do it. After all, to be dishonest in one regard, and to assert that you are in fact right when you know you are not, is to participate in creating an atmosphere where someone else--with their best interests above yours--will reciprocate. To be honest, even when one does not directly gain from the interaction, is actually a furtherance of self-interest (insofar as it prevents others from lying about you more authoritatively than you can defend yourself).

Which brings me to the more-apropos discussion I initially brought up. The root of the word "politics" is in a Greek branch of philosophy that studied the relationship of the one to the many (specifically one member of society to the rest of society). Defining it suchly carries with it connotations of oligarchy, which are not entirely inappropriate as that's how Athens governed itself, with privileged citizens making decisions based on majority votes that had binding power over noncitizens. This is the background chatter I have in my head when reading the political discourse.

It strikes me that politicians and their political parties would do well to remember their self-interest is not just in immediate gratification, but also in long-term survival (and perhaps that long-term survival serves a greater self-interest). Though harder to see, the current nature of the discussion in this country--which is to "spin" and "counterspin" until one is blue in the face--serves no purpose but to disengage voters from the system. The Democrats call Republicans liars, and vice versa; the Republicans position themselves as morally superior, and vice versa; the Democrats condemn Republicans, and vice versa. By engaging in a game of one-upmanship over who knows the most vitriolic language to term the other dishonest, they create an atmosphere of hopelessness. Why should an otherwise neutral voter even bother with this system, when neither party is better than the other?

(Nevermind the abominable fixation on the two-party system in this country.)

And again, it is striking that both Republicans and Democrats continue to recreate the debate as ad hominem attacks and bitter rivalry without really focusing on the issues. It might be simply that both parties' efforts to court the majority of moderate America has resulted in two parties with only nominal differences from each other, and by violently skirmishing over extreme language they distract voters from their growing irrelevance as political engines. If there is no meaningful division between Republican and Democrat there is no real purpose to support either, and one would think the machina would rust away.

The low voter turnouts, the widespread distrust of the government, these things might be the cause of the polarization (and polemicization) of political discourse. Without a reason to believe in these parties, without meaningful differences to separate voters along reasonable issues, the only people left to support these parties are the extremists and the ideologues. It is hard to read, one way or the other, how this situation has arisen.

My, this long and probably confused post was merely the result of seeing the parties attempt to shape the truth in ways most conducive to their own interests. I wonder if those preliterate societies knew, better than we did, how fluid that "truth" really is.

My long post.

Having told my boss that I will be leaving my job at the end of the year, I feel the need to share something written months ago that I feel sums up my feelings about what I want to do with my life:

I have wanted to be an archaeologist for most of my life. I've never thought about it, questioned it, or analyzed it. I also never thought it was something I could actually do. Now, that I'm on the threshold of reaching for this goal, I find it's necessary that I examine my reasons and desires. I have to ask why.

Ancient history has always held my fascination. First, it was dinosaurs, of course. There are few children who don't love dinosaurs at some point in their lives. Those giant, almost mythical creatures that could have been conjured from a child's own fertile imagination. Dinosaurs are like a storybook made real, a fantasy given life. They're the next best thing to dragons, honestly, except the dinosaurs were real.

Then, Egyptology took hold--again, another stock fascination for many children. Egypt's pharaohs and mummies, their gold and lapis lazuli, their animal-headed gods, exotic rituals, and hieroglyphics represented a world both similar to my own and yet fabulously different. For a child who loved cats and wrote notes in code to her best friend, a love of ancient Egypt made perfect sense.

After becoming engrossed with Egyptian history, I developed a desire to know how Egyptologists and archaeologists learned what they knew about ancient civilizations. Everything I read or learned I looked at and asked, "But how you can you be sure?"

In the 1970's, my elementary school caught fire and parts of it were destroyed. By my time in the late 80's and early 90's, the building had been rebuilt, damages repaired. However, in certain parts of the playground, pieces of painted cinderblocks could be found buried, one side a light brownish tan, the other painted a sea foam green. There was a drainage ditch that ran through part of the playground, and this was the best hunting ground for pieces of the old school building. Areas where rain water had washed away the topsoil were the richest finds. The pieces I found... were they from the bathrooms? The main hallway, a classroom? Was this sea foam green the colors other children passed as they went to their classrooms? Or had this color been a part of a larger pattern of paint? The only bricks I found were this color--were they all originally this color? What else was their to find in the dirt in that drainage ditch? Were the blocks definitively from the old school building? From the fire? Subsequent demolition and rebuilding?

I always wondered. I never found out.

In high school, it was ancient Greece and Rome that held my attention. I took Latin, and I loved reading through the Latin texts and deciphering the language. I never quite memorized all those ablative uses, but I always looked forward to the class. Archaeology was always something I wanted to do. However, in my search for a college, I never thought about whether or not there was an archaeology or anthropology program at the schools I considered. I was gifted in literature classes--I assumed I'd be an English major. I didn't want to be one, but I sort of assumed. For some reason, I'm not sure why, I never thought archaeology was real. It was the realm of dragons and dinosaurs.... a child's dream, but not an adult's life.

Why? Why did I think that? My friends encouraged me, my family supported my interests. My grandparents gave me old National Geographic magazines and my father shared documentaries he would see on television with me. So why wasn't it real to me? My grandmother shared with me old civil war bullets she'd found on the mountain near her house growing up and arrowheads found right alongside the bullets. I grew up surrounded by history and archaeology, and never thought it was real.

Social pressure. Children grow up to become doctors, nurses, lawyers, teachers, firefighters, police officers, engineers, veterinarians, husbands/wives/fathers/mothers. Not archaeologists.

Television. Indiana Jones, while exciting and adventurous, is not a real archaeologist. He says to a classroom at the start of The Last Crusade that most of archaeology is done in the library in the form of research. Then he goes on an exciting adventure to exotic locales seeking a mythical and supernatural artifact. He lives a double life, one real and the other fantasy. This is the stereotype of an archaeologist.

Lara Croft, sexy yet anatomically impossible, is not a real archaeologist. She's a self-proclaimed tomb robber, and the bane of real archaeologists. She also fights monsters that guard the treasures she seeks to steal and sell. She's a gun-toting ass-kicking bitch and no one had better get in her way. She's Indiana Jones with breasts and a smaller waistline.

Being out in the field, whether you're male or female, is not sexy to anyone who isn't an archaeologist, and it's not sexy because of the company. It's sexy because you love your work. Who torments themselves if they don't really love it? Indiana Jones got one thing right--most archaeology doesn't happen in the field. It's not in a library, these days, though--it's a lab. Analysis is most of the job.

I learned this in college. And I'm okay with that. The job doesn't seem tedious to me. My first anthropology class, World Prehistory, taught me a lot about anthropology, archaeology, and my own interests. Ancient eastern civilizations still fascinated me. Give me Sumerians, Egyptians, Hittites, Assyrians, Phoenecians, Minoans. The civilizations surrounding the Mediterranean have always drawn my eye. I learned about archaeological methods in that class, and found that those fascinated me.

In a school that has no anthropology department and two anthropologists on campus, I decide to be an anthropology major. Why not transfer? The university I attended is a liberal arts institution, and that liberal arts approach to education melds well with anthropology and archaeology. Both disciplines segue perfectly into any number of other fields, which in return, can be applied within anthropology or archaeology. Biology, political science, economics, geology, sociology, gender studies, history, classics.... After one anthropology class, I saw connections everywhere. I could take what I wanted or needed out of other classes I took and apply it within the field of anthropology, of which archaeology is most often found as a sub-field. Archaeology is both scientific and interpretive--there are facts, there is evidence, there is procedure, and there are unknowns that must be accounted for through theories, hypotheses, and testing observations.

And sometimes, there's almost a storytelling element to archaeology. A story based on facts as well as educated guesses and inferences. It's the story of human history, as much as that sounds like a cliche. People like having a connection to their past. Maybe it's a southern thing, growing up as I did in the South. However, I doubt it. Identity is often based on the past, especially group identity. Archaeology has certainly been used to justify many different group identities, often at a national level.

My independent study my senior year was a study of ethnicity. I didn't really choose this topic. My advisor, in a laid back sort of way, guided me toward ethnicity. I also couldn't think of any other topic I was interested in to which I could then match an advisor on campus available to guide an independent study. So it was ethnicity. At first, I was uninterested. My first paper, in my eyes, was an utter failure. My advisor didn't seem terribly impressed, either. After that humbling experience, of turning in and discussing a paper I had written with no interest and certainly had no interest in discussing, I forced myself to approach the topic in a more mature and academic manner. Interested or not, this was the topic I had agreed on and I would get whatever benefit I could out of investigating it.

I gradually became more engrossed with the subject. How do we define ethnicity? In some cases, there are concrete markers that delineate the boundary between one group and another. In many cases, the markers are less clear. I couldn't find a definition that anthropologists seemed to all agree on--everyone had their own definition, and applied it to their own research areas.

Now, in seeking to begin a career in cultural resource management, I also wonder at the role that archaeology plays in creating or maintaining ethnic identities (or, potentially, in changing or even destroying ethnic identities). Research has been done on the role of archaeology in the rise of nationalism, but nationalism and ethnicity aren't the same concept. Ethnicity seems more fluid. What defines one group may not define another.

Mostly, I wonder if I'll end up doing what I want to do with my life. I wrote the preceding paragraphs as I was attempting to come up with a statement of purpose for a graduate school application. I am not using that particular piece of writing, but it helped me get a few things clear in my head.

An excerpt.

Aura walks into the room as Gabriel pulls the shirt from his shoulders. He casts black eyes hooded over his scarred shoulder and the eye says what the mouth does not. Need something?

Nice tattoo. The corner of her mouth twitches as if on strings. What’s it mean?

“The end of the lullaby.”

That’s queer.

His head turns around and the growling purring voice is quiet for a moment. His whole body revolves a tanned planet and she recognizes the weight around him the weight of the air heavy and wavering across his body. It is not heat she has never felt warm around him and as he faces her a short breath from her lips blows out frosty and the icicles clatter to the ground to shatter in twinkles.

Something you needed? the well of a mouth asks.

I need money.

It is Gabriel’s turn to smile.

Look just give me twenty dollars and I’m gone. Let’s not get into this again.

Get into what?

She raises her left hand middle finger extended. She looks a moment and her flesh is taut white and cold. You going to give me the money or what?

The smile drops from his face and the air wavers madly around him. Roiling and flickering like the wash from a candle wick but heavy and not hot. So heavy. Aura feels the weight settle on her and the floorboards creak while her sneakers sag. So heavy.

Go ask Michael for it he says in a whispering snarl.

Fuck you Gabriel.

His eyes are black pools receding into the echoes of dying eternity.

Get out he says and the voice is the gravel of a hundred thousand years crushed to dust under the weight of the snow.

She drags her limping feet to the doorway and the heaviness leaves her in a pulsing rush of pinpricks and heat scalding her fingertips and the edges of her toes. She looks behind her to call one last curse and leaps the tenement stairs with the emptiness of his eyes drawing her in.

He picks up the icicles of her frozen breath and holds the end against his wrist. His boiling blood leaks out and over the sharp corners of the icy t in his hand. It hisses into steam and the noise rattles around his ears.

The spiderwebs at the windowsill sing out to him shrilly Does it really say that Does the ink really say that.

He smiles sadly.

Of course not.

Little by little

Some days, you can feel your soul, your very essence, dying a little more inside you. You can feel you internal being slipping into the depths of despair. You sense hope fading.

Then the day ends, you go home, and see a ray of sunlight. And realize that you have to return to work the next day and face the same angst as the day before.

No, I don't like my job anymore. I feel my creativity being stifled, my love of my work shrivelling up and drying out. I sense the end.

Need some refreshing water?

Some things you come across in the course of your day you just have to blog about the moment you see it. This picture is one of those things. I saw this picture when checking out a webpage for a water delivery company, because Pseudo Boss Lady wants me to look into getting a water cooler for our department. Now, what does this picture say to you?

• A) Order water from our company!
• B) Doublemint, doublemint gum!
• C) "Oh, Buffy, you dropped some water on your itty bitty white shirt... let me help you take it off..."

It's a tough question to answer. It's ok. I'll wait.

Because no project is ever finished without some idiot's unqualified opinion.

So I'm working on the cover of a trifold brochure I'm working on for my company. I feel hesitantly confident in saying that, since the CEO, CFO, and HR director like it, I'm basically in the clear company-wise. Artistically I feel damn good about it given I've never learned how to draw. This is the background to the scenario I will describe below.

So the HR director told me to get a third party opinion of it, just to see what the other people around me think. So I head to the only cube monkey who's still here. A stereotypical redneck, one who thought Judaism was "all earth mother-y." I show her the Example of What Not To Do, a brochure of one of our competitors that the CEO gave me because it made her want to vomit.

Let me tell you what it looks like. Lavender background, dark purple type at the bottom, medical stock photography at the top, a person I am now fondly referring to as Generic Goateed Medical Professional #37. Then this quote, with various words highlighted in blue, otherwise white text on black: "I became a doctor so I could practice medicine." It's cringe-inducing.

So with the prohibition against stock photography, and with our corporate line being something like "raising the bar," or whatever, I go African-abstract or German Expressionist Art Deco or something and up pops my brochure cover. I like it.

I'm not really interested in someone else's opinion, least of all Cube Monkey's. So I show her the Example of What Not to Do. She likes it.

I shudder, because inside, I'm dying a little. I can feel it. It's my gall bladder. I no longer have a gall bladder anymore--it died because of Cube Monkey. I might need a transplant, and if I can't digest my food anymore and have to spend the next fifty-some-odd years in a constant battle with thunderous flatulence and Biblical stomach upset I'm sending her to jail for killing my gall bladder.

So I show her my brochure and steel myself for something else--maybe my left testicle. It might die. And I'm worried. I need them both. Dudes can back me up on this. It's not like God gives us two for an emergency plan. We freakin' need it, because all of fifth and sixth grade is a cosmic test to see if your nuts can survive this Comic Gravity the Almighty endows on them. Anything vaguely pain-shaped will immediately, because of the curvature of spacetime, fly straight at your nuts. This gets rarer as you get older, but it still happens, generally with footballs, and mostly when your family is videotaping you.

(The secret Djinn Corollary to special relativity: that the curvature of spacetime is warped by a Scrotal Attractive Force solely to allow for America's Funniest Home Videos. I postulate the existence of the Bob Sageton, a new particle that creates the Scrotal Attractive Force. God may not play dice, Mr. Einstein, but he goddamn needs that #1 video.)

Anyway, Cube Monkey looks at my cover. "It's nice," she says. "But it doesn't say what we do."

I point to the text that says, pretty clearly, in even Cube Monkey-legible English, MEDICAL PRACTICE MANAGEMENT.

"Yeah, but, the other one had a picture of a doctor on it."

There. I feel it. Like a needle right into the scroat. I'll have one less stepchild by sundown, I know it. And all those injuries with soccer balls and what-have-you means I'm getting a two-headed kid in a couple years. Shit.

"You mean Generic Goateed Medical Professional #33?" I ask Cube Monkey, trying to erect a sarcasm forcefield to keep her nut-killing idiocy away from me.

"You know what you could do?" she asks, clearly wanting to be helpful.

At this point I get a nosebleed. It's really hot and coppery and it starts dribbling down my lip. "What?" I ask, and the blood bubbles a little. The needle in my scroat has temporarily receded. Whether this is because the hemorrhage in my brain is reducing my ability to feel pain, or some other, more ridiculous reason, I don't know, but I'm glad. I'll willingly sacrifice my frontal lobe to keep Lefty the Wonder-Nut. (Shut up. So I named my left testicle. I don't have to f-cking impress you.)

"You could put blue dollar bills going up and down the bars," Cube Monkey mentions, eyebrows up, totally ignorant she's just driven the last nail straight through the coffin and right into my forehead.

The sheer horror of the situation made me black out. I woke up after dark. The cleaning crew had helpfully moved me slightly to the side of Cube Monkey's space so they could get at the trashcan. I dabbed at the crusted blood under my nose and limped to the door, the pain in the left side of my scrotum nauseatingly hot.

This is who I have to work with.

Testicle-stabbing Cube Monkeys.

God help my children.

hee hee

Now this is pretty funny. I can't help that I'm immediately enticed by anything that can be described as both "sadistic and practical."

Too long

It's been far too long since I last posted, but at leaset Djinn has taken up the slack now that he's settled in Austin, TX, at his new job and in his new apartment. I am still in my same job. However, I am looking to change that, as I'm again applying to grad schools. I'll hopefully be visiting one early next week to meet with some professors in the department and see how well I'd fit in. I promise that the fact that New Pseudo Boss Lady is now officially at work in the department has nothing to do with my new zest for going to graduate school. (wink wink) I really do just want to be back in school. I miss the intellectual stimulation, and I find myself getting mentally stagnant, and I'm not fond of that feeling.

For some strange reason, over Christmas and New Year's, I went on an unanticipated boycott of all things computer and technology related. I brought my laptop home with me and didn't touch it the whole week. I didn't even take it with me to visit Djinn in Austin over New Year's (we had an awesome visit, by the way, if anyone's curious). We ate downtown on New Year's Eve at Sullivan's Steakhouse, and then walked around downtown Austin for a bit. Overall, I vote it was the best New Year's Eve ever.

I have been a bit busy at work, and stressed, but nothing too out of the ordinary. I wish I had a bit more to share right now, but my brain just decided to stop because it's lunch time.