Ocean pulling close

Apologies to my readers (there are so many of you, I know) for not updating this more frequently. It just often fails to cross my mind that I've got my own blog these days and I'm going to add new entries to it more often than we see regime change in this country. And, given the time of year this is, and which year it is, I've tended to have quite a bit on my plate of late. I'm really waiting for that preponderance of free time that was supposed to follow both 1) the completion of my thesis and 2) the completion of classes. I just seem to keep finding lots of stuff to do (and there's so much more that I still haven't done yet).

Anyway, it's starting to feel like this really is the end of the line. Finals Week has come and gone, most of the building has moved out for the summer and the rest (save for the 13 either graduating or with permission to stay during Senior Week) have to leave by 6 p.m. tomorrow. It's funny, because while I don't really interact with so many of the people who live in this dorm (not this year), it somehow feels lonelier, less like home, without other inhabitants. It just kind of strange, because I haven't had the same sappy, sentimental feelings of longing about leaving college that I got toward the end of my senior year of high school.

I think I might know, at least in part, why this is. Looking around tonight when we went on the trip to the beer garden (the first official event of Senior Week), I realized that I really don't know or recognize or identify with most of the other graduating seniors. Not anymore, at least. For most of my first two years, I hung out mainly with other people in my grade. But, things changed, friendships soured and I found that my closest friends were all in different grades from me. Some of them graduated two years before me, one graduated last year, a couple will finish next year and a few more the year after. So, in a lot of ways, it's hard for me to get overly sentimental. My friends usually go through these phases of life at different times from me, so there's a certain sense that I'm going through this on my own.

Movin' on

All the immature people, where do they all come from?

Many aspects of dorm and college life will not be missed following my graduation next week. Getting fleeced at every opportunity by a university already bilking me (mostly my parents) out of 40 grand a year. Living in a miserably decrepit building that university has no interest in renovating or upgrading. Spending more than $11 to eat recycled, canned, unrecognizable slop while the "Dining Capital of the North Shore" beckons just a block away.

But I think what I'll miss least is the people.

That's not to say I won't miss anyone. Certainly I'll miss the charming and lovely Colleen, who sadly is two grades behind me despite only being 10 months my junior. And, there are lots of other friends and friendly faces I'll be leaving behind. A ragtag group of friends (who should know who they are). Annette, who greets me with a smile every day as she cleans my dorm. Ross, ever-relaxing on the job and a PARC institution. The cashiers and cooks at Norris. My mailroom crew in the library. Ben, the hard-working, always-gregarious library janitor who never fails to talk my ear off about the Cubs and how they' ll be out of first place in a day or two. These people I'll remember warmly, with a certain amount of longing. They're the people who made Northwestern seem inviting, feel like home ... or at least like Cheers.

But there's a whole other crowd of folks I'll reflect upon only with contemptuous pity. All the people who didn't exactly make college an entirely welcoming experience, or who at least shook my faith in my own generation. What's really sad, is that they're my peers. Or, rather, at least they're about the same age, in roughly the same grade as me. They're the people who drive me up a wall because of their immaturity.

This is not to say that I'm not the pot, calling the kettle black. I have my share of immaturity. I still like to act somewhere less than my age at times (though I wonder, really, whether it's truly such immature behavior for a guy in college), and certainly I used to be incredibly immature, like way back when I started university. But, the one thing I know I've got going for me, that I can't say about many of my peers (or at least it's not manifest in them), is that I've grown up, matured, become wiser. It wasn't an easy process, and I've certain been through my own personal purgatory to get this far, but can say with complete confidence that I'm a better person for it.

Perhaps this is because I don't dwell on the past quite the same way other people do. I think about the past a lot, especially as a historian, but I think my training as a historian -- and, I must say through gnashed teeth, all those years of studying literature in high school -- have equipped me well to observe my own life.

(Remarkable how the greatest teachers, the professors I admire most and will always think of fondly, are the scant few who taught me how to think, not what to think. Such a valuable tool for life, not to mention for my future career as an academic, yet one that I feel so many people never develop.)

I think most people believe empathy is a gift, that people who are able to understand where others are coming from and to not make value-laden judgments were simply born with a predisposition for that. Probably I used to feel that way myself. But what I've really learned in college, and what's become most dramatically evident this last year, is that empathy is a cultivated attribute, not a natural aptitude.

I recall exactly the moment where this began to become crystal clear for me. Back in February, as I was outlining my thesis, I was struggling to come up with a core argument, with the thesis of my thesis. Constantly tempted to simply say one side or the other was right, I sought out the professional advice of the sage Guy Ortolano, PARC's assistant master, a fifth-year graduate student in history and the best adviser I've ever known. His advice, short and sweet, was not to judge, to simply explain why each side came to feel the way they did and base my argument on that. Such a seemingly simple notion, but one so valuable. My thesis benefitted immeasurably from this advice, and in turn, I gained a lot personally from it.

So, maybe I simply have the advantage of experience (and perhaps age) in reaching some level of emotional maturity. I just wish more people developed this skill. Frankly, it'd go a long way toward solving many of the world's ills. If nothing else, it might at least keep people from acting so pissy at each other all the time.

You can go home again -- buy why?

One weight lifted from my shoulders, another beginning to crush my spine.

As of about 2:45 p.m. CDT yesterday, I am finished with my undergraduate education at Northwestern. That's roughly when my last Czech lesson finished, which was the last class and coursework I had left to complete. My German class concluded with the final chapter test last Friday, and of course I turned in my thesis nearly three weeks ago. So, I'm done. Finished. Fertig.

There was a definite feeling of accomplishment for me when that moment came. I was a bit surprised at how much pride I felt. I've sort of envisioned for a couple of years that the end of my undergrad work would be sort of an anticlimax, particularly since I plan to go to grad school and have several more years of university work to go before I'll be finished as a student. Plus, I've never found college terribly difficult or exceptionally trying. I'm not saying I knew everything already, or that I didn't have to work hard to get through it, but I've always had this inner confidence that's refused to allow me to believe that I could possibly do anything but not only finish, but finish on time, and with all sorts of awards and honors. Still, it did give me a certain satisfaction to know that I've actually reached that point.

I've wondered recently why finishing my bachelor's has proven so satisfying. In great measure, I think it owes to the ugly gray cloud of uncertainty raining -- or is that reigning? -- over my life these days. I know that on 21 June between 11 a.m. and 1 p.m. I'll receive a bachelor of arts in history and political science and that I have a plane ticket back to Los Angeles on 30 June. Beyond that, the world is one big muddled orb.

Part of this sudden preoccupation owes to a very recent development, namely the knowledge that one of my fellow graduates has found a good job doing more or less what she wants, thus offering her some direction through the great abyss that lurks beyond graduation. I can't help but panic or feel like something of a slacker to see my peers getting ahead of me, so to speak. Not that it's a reflection of me, my abilities or who I am, but there is a sort of deflating effect to realizing that I'm not necessarily doing "what I should be doing."

Maybe that's not entirely true. A lot of my failure to find a job stems from my own failure to take much initiative in the process. I didn't even seriously consider looking for jobs, save for a brief look into the Teach for America program, until April or so. This was, of course, because I was banking, perhaps too heavily, on getting a Fulbright and relying on that for the next year. I didn't find out that it didn't come through for me until mid-March, however, which gave me rather a delayed start to my job search. And, since that's when I had to kick into top gear for my thesis, I didn't look proactively for a lot in the past couple of months, really not until this last week. I perused job listing sites and saw stuff that interested me, but I never followed up on much of it, aside from some positions in Prague, all of which rapidly dried up for me.

A big problem I have is that I see jobs that look interesting, stuff I wouldn't mind doing, but invariably they want experience and/or an advanced degree, neither of which I exactly possess. People keep telling me to disregard that, but it's hard not to be dissuaded by it. I've never exactly been good about finding work, so I wouldn't say I'm particularly skilled when it comes to browsing the job market. And, I also take no heart in the present state of the U.S. economy, which seems to be conspiring to screw over people from my class. That's an exaggeration, no doubt, but not that much of a stretch. I cannot reiterate or express how disheartening it is for me to have busted my ass for four years of college (not to mention the years of school before that), done everything right -- or so I was always told -- only to discover now that it isn't necessarily enough to get me started. This is probably me being naïve and idealistic, as the crimson-tinted spectacles through which I've always observed the world have given me an irrational belief in merit and hard work. Ironic, isn't it, that someone so rabidly critical of American nationalism has internalized one of the core tenets of the American myth, the notion of the Horatio Alger, rags-to-riches, so-called "American Dream." But I digress.

I guess my point is, I know I have many things to do still, despite being (temporarily) done with school. I should update my Fulbright essays from last year and get all the application paperwork completed, and need to revise/cut down my thesis to make it publication-length. I also need to take my job hunt up a notch. But all of these require motivation I'm currently lacking. I really just want to take some time off, maybe bum around Europe or Chicago or somewhere for a while, and recharge my batteries before the next major life challenge, namely grad school. Is that too much to ask? It is if you're a poor graduating senior like me who lacks a wealthy benefactor or rich patron to finance such a idyllic life. (Joe's offer to let be crash his flat in Prague and bum around on his couch doesn't quite make him the well-to-do donor I'd need.)

So, for the meantime, I'll revert to default, continue searching for jobs stateside, hoping to find that perfect one. Or more accurately, I'll continue to hope that the ideal work situation will think me qualified and capable of the job. I figure to spend a fair amount of the summer sitting at home in California, trolling job listings and futilely seeking something more fulfilling while I try to scrounge together enough savings to support myself down the line.

Whoop-dee-freakin'-doo cough

Illness has become me. My apologies for not writing the past few days. Between Czech homework, German tests and now hacking up my lungs, I haven't quite had the time or strength for it. Quite literally. I'm doing much better, though in the past hour or so my respiratory system's anomalous behavior would belie that contention. So, I give you the rather unexciting update on my life.

I managed to finish my Czech homework late Wednesday night, before it was due Thursday afternoon. I even got a slight jump on my work for this week right before my lesson. The combination of late-night studying and 11th hour homework succeeded in placing me a sufficiently Czech mood so that I hardly lapsed into German during my lesson. This may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but given my daily exposure to German, versus my scant study of Czech, it takes me quite a while to switch to the right foreign language. The only good thing is that I've advanced far enough in my studies of Czech and German that I never accidentally slip into Spanish, as I was wont to do back when I first started learning Czech some two years ago.

Wow. Has it really been that long since I began my Czech studies? Or so long since I was last in my beloved Praha? My, how the time has flown. I've made definite strides in my Czech skills. I can sort of hold up my end of a conversation; I've more or less been exposed to all of the grammar, and can pretty much conjugate verbs and decline adjectives and nouns without continuous reference to a language manual. Pronouns remain sticky, and there are certainly some facets of the language that remain beyond my grasp. But still, it's kind of exciting to be able to discuss something or describe my plans at any reasonable length, particularly when I don't have to stop every other word to ask my teacher for the appropriate vocabulary.

Of course, my vocabulary still sucks. That's largely a product of two things: 1) me not getting the kind of daily, persistent exposure to the language that would give me a much larger active vocabulary, and 2) me not making a very concerted effort to expose myself to the language with greater frequency. Czech is, unfortunately, a fairly obscure language; it's not like German (or especially Spanish) where I'm liable to find someone around who knows a bit and with whom I can have brief conversations in the halls. So, outside of relocating to Prague (which is always under consideration, in no small part because of this), it's very difficult to get enough immersion to really become better. But I'm nonetheless very guilty of the second charge.

Still, I've advanced far enough in my language study to probably satisfy any graduate program's language proficiency. I can easily read and translate a 200-word passage in an hour or two with the judicious use of a dictionary -- it's generally how I go about reading the short texts and plays I'm assigned for homework. I'm not at the high level of proficiency (or virtual fluency) I'd ultimately like to reach, and I'm not sure I'll ever quite get there, but I've made great progress.

The really out-of-this-world experience is reading absurdist Czech drama, in Czech, and being able to not only comprehend it literally, but on a more interpretative, metaphorical level. It's rather mind-boggling. Again, I'm not sure if my understanding owes more to my historical background (which I think helps in leaps and bounds) or my linguistic prowess (admittedly limited), but it's really kind of beautifully frightening to have those moments of epiphany. For example, this past week, I reread a short play by Václav Havel, Vernisaz (Private View), which I had read the previous week. I didn't get a lot out of it the first time around, but I had this great moment of understanding the second time, when I suddenly realized that one of the characters, Bedrich (Frederick), was a subversive of sorts, someone who refused to collaborate (or to not resist) the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, and suffered materially for it. Once I figured out this small, slightly important detail, the whole play began to make sense. Truly frightening.

After my Czech lesson Thursday afternoon, I began to develop a sore throat. This is never pleasant, but it was a different kind of sore than the usual post-nasal drip discomfort. It hurt a lot more, but I more or less ignored it because I had to study for my last German test and finish the entire chapter's workbook section, which, per normal, I put off till the night before the exam. The test turned out all right, but I didn't, when I took it Friday morning. Ignoring my better judgment to go back to bed and rest, I opted to head to work for a couple of hours before my already-scheduled appointment at the health service center to have my head (well, my ears) examined. They took a look in my ears, determined that I had ear wax buildup, took a throat culture, assigned me prescription strength Sudafed, and scheduled me an appointment to have a surgeon examine my various moles. Then they cleaned out my ears as much as they could, took another look, and debated whether I have otitus media, a middle-ear infection. Rather than overmedicate me, they opted to check me out again when I return (too) early Monday morning.

After that fun experience, I trekked up north to do my daily hearing trial. With my thesis complete, I signed up for a hearing science study. It's pretty simple: sit at a computer in a soundproof booth and listen to tones randomly chosen. I then have to determine whether the tone was inside or outside the noise. There are 50 of these noises in each block, and 10 blocks in each day's trial. The whole process takes about half an hour, and I get paid $7 a session. Not a killing, but it's nice, low-stress, supplemental income.

From there I went to the "I Survived a Slavic Language" Party thrown by the Slavic Department. Of course, the only people I knew there were professors, since I do Czech as an independent study, and all of the people I might tangentially know from the regular Czech course didn't show. My head cold has sapped my appetite, so I didn't dig into the free pizza and other goodies on offer. Instead, I downed a couple of glasses of Mattoni, a popular brand of Czech mineral water, as well as a bottle of regular water, and felt myself getting hotter and more ill by the minute. I probably should've left very soon, but I just couldn't get myself to leave until I was fairly sick and the party was starting to wind down. I did, however, correctly identify one of the Russian songs being played in the background, "Ty ili Ja" (You or Me) by the pioneering Soviet rock group Mashina Vremeni (Time Machine), which I wrote about in my Russian folklore class last year. Essentially, as I explained to the department adviser, I argued that Mashina was the Russian equivalent of the Beatles, at least in terms of the influence they had on subsequent Soviet rock bands, and in winning the Russian ear over to rock music as an art form. The very clever point I made in my paper was that they had poetic lyrics, which was essential to gain legitimacy in the proud Russian cultural heritage that dates back to Pushkin. Of course, I failed to make this point with the department adviser, who tried to convince me that Mashina was really the Russian Pink Floyd. I really had no way to argue with her, since she was fluent in Russian and the only Mashina lyrics I knew were the scant few translated into English in one of the books I had cited for my paper, so the debate was a lost cause.

When I returned home, I felt pretty awful; certainly not up to cooking pasta as we had planned previously. So, we went to the dining hall, which mercifully had smoothies on offer the one day I really needed them. I drank three while at dinner, and nicked two more to keep in tow for the evening. I really had no appetite; I managed to eat some cheese, a bowl of Lucky Charms and two brownie cookie bars, which was the sum total of my food intake for the day. After dinner, I opted to accompany Colleen, Britt and Kathy to the apartment Colleen and Britt will be inhabiting next year, on the off chance that I'll find employment in the Chicago area and be needing a place to stay. This place didn't exactly knock my socks off, and it wasn't quite so big as I had imagined. But, I also realized that, realistically, on a college student or recent grad's budget, this is about as good as one can do. All that became moot, however, when Kathy pretty much decided that she loved the place and wants to move in. By this point, I was feeling really awful, so we all headed home.

Once back, I got ready for bed (at 7:45 p.m.) and then slept for three hours. I woke up and decided I should stay up a bit so I wouldn't feel like getting up unnaturally early the following morning, so we watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I went back to bed around 2:30 or 3 a.m., and slept till a quarter to two. Not too shabby.

I did have this awful nightmare, dreaming that I was back in Anaheim and the United States was at war, but the fantastic military we've sunk billions of dollars into failed to prevent the enemy combatant from bombing my hometown at will while I was powerless to do anything but watch in horror and try to shield myself from the dust, smoke and debris. I keep having these terrifying visions of wartime, imagining what it must feel like to be in a war zone, to have soldiers and armies and air forces trying to destroy you. It doesn't happen all the time, and usually I'm awake, but something will just give me the sense of being in that war zone. I think the first time it happened was back in January, when we were driving to San Diego to visit my great aunt. The highway cuts through Camp Pendleton, the nation's largest Marine base, where preparations clearly were underway for the forthcoming invasion of Iraq. Military helicopters were flying overhead, carrying men and materiel to battleships and carriers situated just off the coast in the Pacific. It was a sobering experience, to think that this must be something like life in wartime, except that the helicopters weren't trying to bomb the hell out of the highway we were traveling on or us for continuing to cruise along despite the military presence.

But I had never experienced this sensation in a dream, or at least not in one so haunting as this nightmare. It was appalling. When I woke up, I couldn't be sure if I was actually awake or still asleep, or if I had dreaming at all. I was confused, disoriented, unsure if the country was actually at war. At moments I resented the U.S. military for proving so utterly incompetent and unable to defend the homeland from wave after wave of foreign bombers that rained fire and terror and devastation on my city. Then, as I gained greater lucidity, I realized that the real blame for this illusory devastation belonged to U.S. foreign policy, which meddled in things that should not be meddled in, prompting anger and retaliation. Of course, this was all a dream, but it felt so real; my panic and horror seemed tangible, concrete. If I rolled down the window of the van in which I sat, the entire car would be flooded with the smoke and dust enveloping the environment, the result of another bomb striking a target two or three miles away. And the really scary part of it is that this was only a dream, just a figment of my imagination. None of the horror or fear or agony could ever compare to someone living in an actual war zone and watching helplessly as some foreign force laid waste to his or her hometown. Certainly it was quite a wake-up call for my own pacifism, a shocking reminder that war is real, it is hell and no end justifies this means.

Illness has become me. My apologies for not writing the past few days. Between Czech homework, German tests and now hacking up my lungs, I haven't quite had the time or strength for it. Quite literally. I'm doing much better, though in the past hour or so my respiratory system's anomalous behavior would belie that contention. So, I give you the rather unexciting update on my life.

I managed to finish my Czech homework late Wednesday night, before it was due Thursday afternoon. I even got a slight jump on my work for this week right before my lesson. The combination of late-night studying and 11th hour homework succeeded in placing me a sufficiently Czech mood so that I hardly lapsed into German during my lesson. This may not sound like much of an accomplishment, but given my daily exposure to German, versus my scant study of Czech, it takes me quite a while to switch to the right foreign language. The only good thing is that I've advanced far enough in my studies of Czech and German that I never accidentally slip into Spanish, as I was wont to do back when I first started learning Czech some two years ago.

Wow. Has it really been that long since I began my Czech studies? Or so long since I was last in my beloved Praha? My, how the time has flown. I've made definite strides in my Czech skills. I can sort of hold up my end of a conversation; I've more or less been exposed to all of the grammar, and can pretty much conjugate verbs and decline adjectives and nouns without continuous reference to a language manual. Pronouns remain sticky, and there are certainly some facets of the language that remain beyond my grasp. But still, it's kind of exciting to be able to discuss something or describe my plans at any reasonable length, particularly when I don't have to stop every other word to ask my teacher for the appropriate vocabulary.

Of course, my vocabulary still sucks. That's largely a product of two things: 1) me not getting the kind of daily, persistent exposure to the language that would give me a much larger active vocabulary, and 2) me not making a very concerted effort to expose myself to the language with greater frequency. Czech is, unfortunately, a fairly obscure language; it's not like German (or especially Spanish) where I'm liable to find someone around who knows a bit and with whom I can have brief conversations in the halls. So, outside of relocating to Prague (which is always under consideration, in no small part because of this), it's very difficult to get enough immersion to really become better. But I'm nonetheless very guilty of the second charge.

Still, I've advanced far enough in my language study to probably satisfy any graduate program's language proficiency. I can easily read and translate a 200-word passage in an hour or two with the judicious use of a dictionary -- it's generally how I go about reading the short texts and plays I'm assigned for homework. I'm not at the high level of proficiency (or virtual fluency) I'd ultimately like to reach, and I'm not sure I'll ever quite get there, but I've made great progress.

The really out-of-this-world experience is reading absurdist Czech drama, in Czech, and being able to not only comprehend it literally, but on a more interpretative, metaphorical level. It's rather mind-boggling. Again, I'm not sure if my understanding owes more to my historical background (which I think helps in leaps and bounds) or my linguistic prowess (admittedly limited), but it's really kind of beautifully frightening to have those moments of epiphany. For example, this past week, I reread a short play by Václav Havel, Vernisaz (Private View), which I had read the previous week. I didn't get a lot out of it the first time around, but I had this great moment of understanding the second time, when I suddenly realized that one of the characters, Bedrich (Frederick), was a subversive of sorts, someone who refused to collaborate (or to not resist) the Communist regime in Czechoslovakia, and suffered materially for it. Once I figured out this small, slightly important detail, the whole play began to make sense. Truly frightening.

After my Czech lesson Thursday afternoon, I began to develop a sore throat. This is never pleasant, but it was a different kind of sore than the usual post-nasal drip discomfort. It hurt a lot more, but I more or less ignored it because I had to study for my last German test and finish the entire chapter's workbook section, which, per normal, I put off till the night before the exam. The test turned out all right, but I didn't, when I took it Friday morning. Ignoring my better judgment to go back to bed and rest, I opted to head to work for a couple of hours before my already-scheduled appointment at the health service center to have my head (well, my ears) examined. They took a look in my ears, determined that I had ear wax buildup, took a throat culture, assigned me prescription strength Sudafed, and scheduled me an appointment to have a surgeon examine my various moles. Then they cleaned out my ears as much as they could, took another look, and debated whether I have otitus media, a middle-ear infection. Rather than overmedicate me, they opted to check me out again when I return (too) early Monday morning.

After that fun experience, I trekked up north to do my daily hearing trial. With my thesis complete, I signed up for a hearing science study. It's pretty simple: sit at a computer in a soundproof booth and listen to tones randomly chosen. I then have to determine whether the tone was inside or outside the noise. There are 50 of these noises in each block, and 10 blocks in each day's trial. The whole process takes about half an hour, and I get paid $7 a session. Not a killing, but it's nice, low-stress, supplemental income.

From there I went to the "I Survived a Slavic Language" Party thrown by the Slavic Department. Of course, the only people I knew there were professors, since I do Czech as an independent study, and all of the people I might tangentially know from the regular Czech course didn't show. My head cold has sapped my appetite, so I didn't dig into the free pizza and other goodies on offer. Instead, I downed a couple of glasses of Mattoni, a popular brand of Czech mineral water, as well as a bottle of regular water, and felt myself getting hotter and more ill by the minute. I probably should've left very soon, but I just couldn't get myself to leave until I was fairly sick and the party was starting to wind down. I did, however, correctly identify one of the Russian songs being played in the background, "Ty ili Ja" (You or Me) by the pioneering Soviet rock group Mashina Vremeni (Time Machine), which I wrote about in my Russian folklore class last year. Essentially, as I explained to the department adviser, I argued that Mashina was the Russian equivalent of the Beatles, at least in terms of the influence they had on subsequent Soviet rock bands, and in winning the Russian ear over to rock music as an art form. The very clever point I made in my paper was that they had poetic lyrics, which was essential to gain legitimacy in the proud Russian cultural heritage that dates back to Pushkin. Of course, I failed to make this point with the department adviser, who tried to convince me that Mashina was really the Russian Pink Floyd. I really had no way to argue with her, since she was fluent in Russian and the only Mashina lyrics I knew were the scant few translated into English in one of the books I had cited for my paper, so the debate was a lost cause.

When I returned home, I felt pretty awful; certainly not up to cooking pasta as we had planned previously. So, we went to the dining hall, which mercifully had smoothies on offer the one day I really needed them. I drank three while at dinner, and nicked two more to keep in tow for the evening. I really had no appetite; I managed to eat some cheese, a bowl of Lucky Charms and two brownie cookie bars, which was the sum total of my food intake for the day. After dinner, I opted to accompany Colleen, Britt and Kathy to the apartment Colleen and Britt will be inhabiting next year, on the off chance that I'll find employment in the Chicago area and be needing a place to stay. This place didn't exactly knock my socks off, and it wasn't quite so big as I had imagined. But, I also realized that, realistically, on a college student or recent grad's budget, this is about as good as one can do. All that became moot, however, when Kathy pretty much decided that she loved the place and wants to move in. By this point, I was feeling really awful, so we all headed home.

Once back, I got ready for bed (at 7:45 p.m.) and then slept for three hours. I woke up and decided I should stay up a bit so I wouldn't feel like getting up unnaturally early the following morning, so we watched Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. I went back to bed around 2:30 or 3 a.m., and slept till a quarter to two. Not too shabby.

I did have this awful nightmare, dreaming that I was back in Anaheim and the United States was at war, but the fantastic military we've sunk billions of dollars into failed to prevent the enemy combatant from bombing my hometown at will while I was powerless to do anything but watch in horror and try to shield myself from the dust, smoke and debris. I keep having these terrifying visions of wartime, imagining what it must feel like to be in a war zone, to have soldiers and armies and air forces trying to destroy you. It doesn't happen all the time, and usually I'm awake, but something will just give me the sense of being in that war zone. I think the first time it happened was back in January, when we were driving to San Diego to visit my great aunt. The highway cuts through Camp Pendleton, the nation's largest Marine base, where preparations clearly were underway for the forthcoming invasion of Iraq. Military helicopters were flying overhead, carrying men and materiel to battleships and carriers situated just off the coast in the Pacific. It was a sobering experience, to think that this must be something like life in wartime, except that the helicopters weren't trying to bomb the hell out of the highway we were traveling on or us for continuing to cruise along despite the military presence.

But I had never experienced this sensation in a dream, or at least not in one so haunting as this nightmare. It was appalling. When I woke up, I couldn't be sure if I was actually awake or still asleep, or if I had dreaming at all. I was confused, disoriented, unsure if the country was actually at war. At moments I resented the U.S. military for proving so utterly incompetent and unable to defend the homeland from wave after wave of foreign bombers that rained fire and terror and devastation on my city. Then, as I gained greater lucidity, I realized that the real blame for this illusory devastation belonged to U.S. foreign policy, which meddled in things that should not be meddled in, prompting anger and retaliation. Of course, this was all a dream, but it felt so real; my panic and horror seemed tangible, concrete. If I rolled down the window of the van in which I sat, the entire car would be flooded with the smoke and dust enveloping the environment, the result of another bomb striking a target two or three miles away. And the really scary part of it is that this was only a dream, just a figment of my imagination. None of the horror or fear or agony could ever compare to someone living in an actual war zone and watching helplessly as some foreign force laid waste to his or her hometown. Certainly it was quite a wake-up call for my own pacifism, a shocking reminder that war is real, it is hell and no end justifies this means.