I Have a Blog?!

Well, hello there blogosphere! It's been over two months since I've written and I apologize to all of my imaginary readers (the readers of the three? four? posts I've written). I wish I could say that I was rescuing 850 Chechnyan orphans while partaking in intense hand-to-hand combat with Russian soldiers, but I was really just laying around, going to class, and writing essays.

So some brief up-dates to catch you up:

My last class was on April 28. It was a sad day--there's nothing I love more than being in a good class and this now means that I'm done with classes for the foreseeable future. Keep your fingers crossed that next fall I'll be back in class at some yet-to-be determined PhD program. As almost everyone knows, I'm taking the year off to take entrance exams and apply for PhD programs. Oh, and to get a real big-kid job. I wish I could lie and say that I'm really looking forward to leaving academia and entering the real world, but I have some major reservations about this. My ideal year off would be to bum around Oklahoma, bonding with the hippies in the Paeso, and reading Hemingway and Whitman. Alas, student loan payments loom overhead and I do have a dog to feed. Reality bites.

I'm done with all of my coursework. The total count is thousands of pages read, six essays, and one lame research methods assignment. Academically this has been one of the most challenging year. It even beats the first semester of my senior year of undergrad, in which I took three lit courses, an advanced French class, and wrote my undergraduate thesis. I never felt overwhelmed with the reading or the essay-writing. The main challenge for me was theory. See, in my undergrad English courses we never really touched on theory. My second year I took a Critical Reading and Writing class where we skimmed the surface of Feminist, Marxist, Post colonialist, and New Historicist theory. I also learned to fear Derrida. It was just a basic introduction. It's in the postgrad courses that they really get into theory. So I had never even heard of Kristeva or Lacan when I got here. There's always been a frustrated philosophy major inside me. I took several philosophy courses, but I don't really have the mind for it. I did, however, end up writing two very theory heavy essays this semester. My last essay was about ethics and the other, meaning I got to know Levinas very well. And did you know that there's a whole theory of transvestites and drag performance? This brings me to my next update--

My dissertation. In April I wrote an essay using Marjorie Garber's theory of transvestites, or the figure of the “third, that which questions binary thinking and introduces crisis." Basically the introduction of a transvestite in a work of literature destabilizes comfortable binaries and projects this discomfort onto a marginalized figure, which is usually that of the transvestite. I'm going to take this theory, explore it, and then apply it to several works of Gothic literature, namely The Monk, The Beetle, and Nightwood. I'll also be looking at Judith Butler's theory of drag performance and parody. I'm going to try to work in some fashion theory as well, using the idea of costuming Gothic bodies in correlation to cross-dressing. My dissertation has to be 15,000 words, so I'm going to try to pack as much into it as possible. I'm really excited about it, as this will be the entire focus of my summer.

Last but not least, the weather. I just thought that I should note that it doesn't get fully dark here until midnight. And it starts to get light around 3:30 in the morning. This has wrecked havoc on my eating and sleeping patterns, but it's getting better. Also, it has been gorgeous here over the past week. I've been told, and weather.com seems to confirm this, it won't get about 70 degrees here this summer. It will be a nice relief from the sweltering Oklahoma summers I'm used to. I realized yesterday that this means I can spend my days outside, instead of huddled around the air conditioner with the blinds closed, dreading the outdoors. That is, if it doesn't rain all summer. Please don't let it rain all summer.

Oh, I've also become a vegetarian. But that's another post for another time.

Springtime for Scotland

It's been almost two weeks since I've written, so I figured I would take some time out of reading Toni Morrison's Beloved to write. My second class (or module) started last Thursday (technically it's my third class, but I'm hard pressed to acknowledge Research Methods as an actual academic endeavor). The class is Female Gothic and all of the texts we are reading are by women. It's a survey course, we started with Ann Radcliffe and Mary Wollstonecraft and are ending with Ann-Marie MacDonald's Fall On Your Knees, which was written in the early 90's. My other class, Contemporary Gothic, is absolutely brilliant, but it's completely out of my niche. I hardly know anything about contemporary fiction, let alone contemporary Gothic fiction. This week we are reading Beloved which I've read twice before and disliked every time I read it. I'm one hundred pages in and I'm starting to believe that the third time is NOT the charm.

I finally made it down to Glasgow this weekend. It's a pretty city; we didn't stray from the city centre and it seemed to me that it's mainly comprised of high-end stores and Starbucks. Great for shopping, but not much else. They do have a Gallery of Modern Art and there is also a TGI Friday's. It's good to know that it's there for when I long for a little taste of America. Only I'm actually wondering just how much of American restaurant it is. There's an American style restaurant in Stirling that offers bangers and mash (sausage and mashed potatoes) and fish and chips along side burgers and fries. I just hope they have fried green beans and ranch dressing.

Here's a fun fact about Scotland: In Scotland there's a rivalry between Edinburgh and Glasgow, similar to that of Oklahoma City and Tulsa, or Houston and Dallas. In other words, people from Edinburgh hate Glasgow and Glaswegians (people from Glasgow) aren't very fond of Edinburgh. And after careful consideration, I would say that I'm on Edinburgh's side of this debate. Edinburgh also has the National Library of Scotland, the Scottish Poetry Library, and JK Rowling wrote Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone there. Edinburgh maybe be a bit more touristy, but you have to get your kilt towels somewhere.

On April 16 I'm going to see Rufus Wainwright in concert in Edinburgh. I'm incredibly excited. I absolutely love Rufus Wainwright and I haven't been to a concert in ages. It's also in my favorite city and, most importantly, it gives me something to which I can look forward.

I was so incredibly bored for the first month I was here that I just wanted to go back to Oklahoma. Now things are picking up and I'm sure that by this time next month I'll be struggling to keep my head above water. Not like that's a big deal, I thrive on stress. The next thing you know, it will be August and I will be a crying mess on a plane back to the States.

Spring has finally arrived in Scotland. Flowers are blooming in the beds that line the path I take walking to campus. Birds are singing and it's finally getting warmer. I no longer have to sit in my room huddled in a sweater and blanket while wearing my fingerless gloves so I can type/read with warm hands. In other words I no longer look like a character from La Boheme when I'm reading in my room. On Sunday the clocks will spring forward and there will be daylight for an extra hour. I'm so happy for spring.

Today in List Making

I like to make lists. I makes lists of the lists I need to make. I often make lists just so I can cross things off. I find crossing things off lists to be very satiating. So now I give you a list.

Things I would be doing if I was in America:

Watching marathons of Golden Girls on WE, the Hallmark Channel, and Oxygen.

Drinking a vanilla Dr. Pepper from Sonic (it's is America's Drive-in).

Playing with my dog.

Driving my car to a coffee shop or the grocery store.

Eating at Panera Bread, Chili's, Taco Bell, or Saturn Grill.

Getting a cupcake from Cuppie's and Joe.

Not wondering exactly why my feet are sticking to my kitchen floor.

Taking a shower barefoot.

Walking around my house barefoot.

Familizing (it's a word my father made up. The Bill May definition would be to spend time with one's family. I keep telling him to stop trying to make "familize" happen. It's not going to happen.)

Making a list of things I would be doing if I was in Scotland.

Internet-pocalypse Now

Yesterday afternoon I thought that the world as I knew it had come to an end.

My internet went out. As in, I turned on my computer, tried to connect to the campus internet server and it wouldn't connect. I like to think of myself as really a hippie who could easily live outside the confines of modern day technology. Well, it's all a lie. I went into crisis meltdown mode. I frantically called the technology desk and was told, quite rudely, that there was something wrong with my computer and that I would have to come in the next day to get my laptop looked at. Still the thought of not having an internet connection just for the night was enough get my panties in a twist. It turns out that there was brief internet outage in several of the campus residences and it was fixed within the hour. They couldn't tell me this over the phone--I had to pack up my laptop and walk the mile to campus to find this out. On the bright side I was forced to get out of the house (I didn't have class yesterday) and enjoy the sunshine (a rarity, but I'll post on that later).

My internet connection is my link to the world, especially the world outside Scotland. I hardly talk on the phone--I skype, email, and facebook message everyone from my friends in Scotland to my family back in Oklahoma. It's (mostly) free, it's fast, and I feel connected to "back home." In this "modern day world" I guess it's not really the ties that bind us, but the internet connection that bind us.

Or maybe I'm just a big ol' chicken and fear that day when I am unable check facebook and my email and various other websites every ten minutes.

A Day at at Time

I've been back in Scotland for almost a month now. Not much has really changed. It took less than a day for me to fall back into my old routine: sleep until noon, spend my afternoons reading, and then at night walk up to Alangrange to watch movies or TV. It's a nice routine--I like structure and schedules and this one suits me very well. It was also incredibly nice to come back to a familiar place. I walked into my room to find my posters on the wall, my clothes in the closet, and my books on the self. It was like coming home after a very long day at work.

Only I've having a hard time of convincing myself that this place is my home. I live in a house with five strangers, the "living room" looks like a waiting room of a doctor's office, and I won't even get started on my kitchen. The only saving grace I have is my room. I am incredibly blessed to have gotten the biggest room in the house and my window overlooks a courtyard that will be beautiful once spring arrives. Even though my things are here, it is incredibly hard to feel comfortable in a place that doesn't have a heart. I also miss my dog--no one is ever really happy to see me when I walk in my door. This house just feels empty.

I don't want anyone to think that I don't love Scotland or that I'm ungrateful and not enjoying the experiences I'm having here. But living an ocean away from everything you've ever known is a lot harder than I thought it would be. I now know why they call it "homesick." It just washes over me and I feel this huge emptiness in my heart that sometimes makes me sick to my stomach. My intense desires to jump on the earliest flight back to Oklahoma probably stems from my living within 30 of my parents' house my entire life. And I've always been a huge homebody--I would rather stay in and read a book or watch a movie than go out.

All that I can do is take it a day at a time. My mantra for the next six months is that each day is a day closer to home. And tomorrow's the first day of March, so that's one month down. Besides, the bright side is much prettier to look at than the dark side.

It's a Long Time Until August

Today is my last full day in Oklahoma until the end of August. I'll admit I'm having mixed feelings about this. I've spent most of my life hating Oklahoma and longing to leave but in the month I've been back, this place has grown on me. And not just because as I'm writing this at after six and the sun is just now setting. There's an unassuming beauty about this place that takes you by surprise. I'm for sure not looking forward to leaving the comforts of home. I'll miss baking in my parents' kitchen, the convenience of my car, and of course my dog, Jake.

Nevertheless, I'm ready to be back in Scotland. The grass will be green, not mangy brown and there's a castle in the distance. I have wonderful friends I can't wait to see, there's no static electricity and my chronically dry skin won't be itchy and painful. Also I have not been in class since the end of November and I'm itching to get back to school. Even though it sometimes doesn't feel like I'm in a Master's program. I read a book, then go to class which is simply seven people sitting in a professor's office, drinking coffee and talking about the novel. It's more like an elite book club. I then write a couple of essays and a dissertation and just like that, I'll have a Master's of Letters in the Gothic Imagination. I'm making it sound too easy--I'm challenged and intellectually stimulated and am growing as an academic with every "meeting" of our "book club."

Tomorrow afternoon I'll get on the first of three planes and begin the second half of my life in Scotland. It's time to say goodbye to Oklahoma and hello to Scotland.