I woke up a lot in the night feeling queasy over my own colossal nerve in thinking I could possibly do all these projects. You know, thinking of times I've been in the middle of something and then afterwards read a newspaper account of it, or someone else's history of it, and thinking but that's not how it was at all. And I'm about to be a person writing something like that. How is one ever to know or say anything? My only answer can be that I have to insist on not claiming to be objective and on the imperfection of knowledge. I'll do the best I can and it won't be the best possible. AND YET. If I don't do it, someone else much stupider will.
I'm feeling the pressure.
God, maybe it would be best not to reapply at bezerkeley and to just remain a happy dilettante. I think professor F. wants to make me better than I can really be. I'm a flake, not a budding Susan S0ntag world-caliber intellectual. I don't have the proper boundaries for this... I don't think I can deal with "the discipline".
and then again on the 3rd or 4th or 5th hand talking to people in my class yesterday i could see how narrow their focus! and the.... the fakery... that one girl Marya, who I realy like, and I like how she can gilbly talk about a book she hasn't read and then suddenly admit it. We were talking about our essay topics and she was saying she'd write about certain authors sort of using this pair of french theory snootypants guys but when I said I hadn't read that and only knew what we'd heard people say in class about them she said she hadn't read it either. Compared to this I am a model of conscientiousness. But I'm still not feeling like I am on any kind of solid ground.
and the essay/review (still not out!) in foetry plash is really seeming like utter nonsense to me right now.
and it's just like every small housish or mom-ish thing I fail to do is telling me "stop it, you are fucking up, you are paving paradise, make your child's life perfect, devote everything to him." honestly i'm doing okay but the (inner) pressure is just a bitch. Hegemony is not a loaded gun pointed inward -- it's a constant rain of blows. I'm feeling bruisey and confused. HOw does anyone deal with life and manage everything? is anything i ever do good enough? what is enough? how do i know if i'm doing okay? really my only external measure is: grades, publication, and the affection and reassurance of people around me. thank god rook and chula believe in me and that my work is worth doing... I'm just saying this because I'm inexplicably stressed and also because I don't want any of you, dear readers, to think that I am self-confident every minute. No. I am so deeply dependent on other people.
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