The Green Fairy and The Green Room

Funny thing about time. In my last post, I mentioned that I’d been browsing absinthe import websites, and now, some four months later, there is a bottle of European absinthe sitting on my desk, courtesy of an all-too-thoughtful friend.

Besides that, I have completed another semester, moved into a new apartment, read some good books, shaved my beard, and undertaken a number of characteristically unpredictable trials and tribulations. Some have gone and some remain.

Since it would be tedious both to write and to read a comprehensive account of the events between the previous and present posts, I’ll stick to some more recent noteworthy items.

After like nine and a half months in Leeds, my dear friend John is a Flagstaff resident again as of the most recent Saturday. That night, we celebrated his return by trading an obscene amount of money for the censorship of any inhibitions that might have prevented us from behaving obscenely. Really, though, it was mostly just chatting and dancing at (mainly) the Monte Vista and Green Room with the townspeople, who were especially festive this weekend, that is, Pride weekend. The toll from Saturday night, financial and physical, might keep me away from the bars for a while. They really might…

I enrolled in and completed a 3-week summer course; namely, a ten-minute playwriting workshop whose purpose, aside from moving me three credits closer to graduation, was encouraging entry into a regional playwriting contest. The play I entered did not win, but the seven that did were performed at Theatrikos. I attended this showcase, which was my first though hopefully not final time there, as my professor (a fellow David Lynch [we spent a half hour one day discussing Twin Peaks during our twenty-minute break] and Raymond Carver aficionado and all-around badass) will be having his full-length comedy ("Enlightenment") performed there in August.

There are several matters buzzing in my mind presently that need contemplation and as sure as I continue to update this, you can be sure they’ll be expressed via blog soon enough.

Easily distracted

Jumpin' jack-o-lopes, I have a lot of work to do this week. On Thursday alone, I have to turn in a synopsis of my research project for Applied Linguistics (topic chosen, synopsis not started), a chapter's worth of workbook and lab manual pages for Spanish (not started), and twenty-four copies of my short story for, what else, Fiction (all but conceptually not started).

You might think this hefty load would warrant some disciplined initiative on my part (I sure do), but pretty much all I've succeeded in so far is depriving myself of necessary sleep for the sake of decidedly less necessary interests. For example, I am now the proud owner of Tha Carter III, Flying Lotus' Los Angeles, and the two most recent TV on the Radio albums, courtesy of the latest (?) pirating technology (i.e. Miles' bit-torrent software). Also, while browsing the first results for a Google search to the tune of "buy absinthe us," I stumbled upon this Czech bitters,



which a fellow who had just returned from a five month stay in Prague was kind enough to let me sample a few weeks back.

This easily avoidable type of distraction is exactly what has left me in such a stressed out, even more sleep-deprived slump at the end of every semester hitherto, and exactly what I set my lucidly hungover mind to avoiding on the drive back up from the Valley the Sunday before school started again. And it all comes back to sleep, or lack thereof. When I sleep enough, I wake up sufficiently rested. It sounds so simple on (the digital equivalent of) paper.

Nevermind this, though. I need to get ready to go for a drive. (:))

A Brief History of Time (as experienced by Andrew)

I came into this world (where else would I be writing from?) a few days plus twenty-one years ago, in an Southeast Valley hospital. My family moved to sort-of suburban North Phoenix and then to suburban North Phoenix. I attended, in order, Moon Mountain Elementary, Mountain Sky Junior High, and Thunderbird High School. Having grown up in a Catholic household of wavering religious commitment, I almost attended Brophy, which may have either protracted or hastened my spiritual evolution to agnostic belief, then agnostic disbelief, to the happier atheism of my present.

At any rate, I have always held some degree of contempt for groupthink in its myriad forms, from the homogenizing commercials that pass for programming on MTV and pop radio to the all-but-pragmatically useless political binarism in the US, and I continue to nurture this sentiment with an ever-rising level of confidence.

I attend Northern Arizona University, as I have for two and a half years, and here I study English with a minor in Spanish and aspirations of someday combining the two in the fields of education and publication (one of these or both).

My interests, excepting but by no means disregarding the social and functional, include what is referred to in academia as the arts and humanities. Sure, I dabble in tennis a few times a year and I'll almost never say no to an offer to go hiking, but despite the insistence of many that I have a build for it, I've never had much interest in sports. Travel intrigues me a great deal and I would like to do a lot of it in my future, but financial limitations have meant that, so far, I haven't gone very far without my family. I won't expound on the particulars of my tastes here, having already offered a characterstic sample on my profile, but as a general statement, I'll say that I appreciate a text, a film, or a song that challenges my intellect and emotions and/or exudes its creator's genuine love for it. That said, if any aesthetic principle has linked my tastes from this age to that age, it's been a sense of evolution and adaptation. I guess I could rephrase this in less flattering terms by admitting that I'm greedy for understanding of people and certain aspects of the world around me.

I read fitfully but passionately, and since grade school I've been told that I'm a good writer. Since I started college, I've known this was true. Nonetheless, I have long gone against my nature and better judgment by making do without a journal. This is not my first blog, but it is the one I hope to make my first really meaningful one, no matter if it is only meaningful to me. The title is not just the name of a The Knife album and one of my current favorite songs. And my audience is not bound by location, membership, or size. It could be just me and it could be you.
And now, with no room for further excuses of the "how do I start this?" or "my first post should be special" order, I can begin publishing dispatches from Here and Now.

Hey, Andrew! Write something!

Oh, okay.