Blessings

I found out last week that I'd been offered a job stitching costumes in the costume shop at Portland Center Stage.  This was incredible news, since I hadn't actually ever met anybody who currently works there.  This is how it went down: some folks at my church are acquainted with the head seamstress of a TV show that's being shot here in Portland, and they put me in touch with her.  Her name is Leslie.  She, in turn, gave me some phone numbers to call and ask about stitching work.  One of those numbers belonged to Tesa, the head seamstress on another Portland-based TV show, who was impressed enough with what I could show her of my work that she called up her contacts at Portland Center Stage and told them to hire me.  I imagine they must really trust her judgment because the next thing I knew I was listening to a slightly awkward and definitely unfamiliar voice (belonging to Lindsay, the "Costume Shop Assistant" at PCS who nevertheless seems to run the place) on the phone offering me my first regular job in a year and a half, and my first full-time job ever.


So that was the first blessing.  I got excited enough about it that even during that phone call I couldn't sit still, and paced around from room to room like an orbiting Sheltie, but slower.  And taller.


Perhaps the next day, a coworker of Leslie called me to ask if it would be all right if she forwarded my contact info to a friend of hers who wanted to have a suit made.  He's apparently rather tall and gangling and has trouble finding suits that fit him properly.  Also it's very difficult to find well-tailored suits in neon yellow.  This was too intriguing an idea to turn down, so I said yes, by all means give him my number.  He'd be my first tailoring client.


That was the second.  There was plenty more pacing during this phone call, and a mixture of anticipation and fear at the prospect of making a whole suit for someone else.


Friday, I received an email from the contact person at DAAD, the scholarship-granting organization to which I've applied four years in a row.  I've learned to hate the sight of her name, Myoung-Shin Kim, which is a shame because it's a really cool name.  Too often has that name been associated in my mind with my own failure.  In the pit of my stomach I felt an ominously concentrated heaviness, as though that's where my hopes and dreams live and they were gathering themselves together in a vain attempt to defend themselves against their inevitable destruction at the hands of this Myoung-Shin Kim with her terrible weapon: the news of my fourth rejection.


Unable to delay the inevitable, even if I'd wanted to, I clicked to open the email and apprehensively scrolled down past the massive header.  My fevered eyes searched for the first full paragraph, sure that it would begin "We regret to inform you..." or "Unfortunately," or perhaps "U suck lolz!"  


But no!  That paragraph started with "Congratulations!" and I read as far as "We are very pleased to announce..." before that ball of anxiety in my gut simultaneously transformed into giddiness and expanded so quickly that my vision was obscured and I couldn't really read the rest of the message.  My hands balled themselves into fists and approached my mouth, which had opened wide in surprise and delight.  My eyes bulged, attempting to see around the joy and euphoria that swam about my head to read the rest of the email to make sure I wasn't jumping to what would be a devastatingly wrong conclusion.  My throat let out a few strangled whoops.  It was true.  I'd gotten the scholarship.


So in less than a week, I received a solid job offer as a lowly stitcher, a potential job opportunity as a full-on tailor, and a giant scholarship to study my favorite subject at my favorite master's program in the entire world while living in my favorite big city ever (so far).  


Now, normally when people say things like "best week evarr!!1!" I wonder if they can possibly know that no week in their future will bring better news or make them even just a tiny bit happier than the one in question.  But really, if I ever experience a better week, I'll probably explode.

The death of uncool?

I came across this article just now. It seems to have some good points, but I'm not sure it's completely on the money.

The article claims that the proliferation of categories of aesthetic things is an indication that nothing is uncool anymore. There's no one 2011 sound for music, there is no one 2011 school of interior design and there is no one 2011 fashion for clothing. Things don't go out of style anymore; they simply add themselves to the list of categories from which one may choose one's aesthetic.

I think this is closely related to the idea of Permanent Style, and may even have set the stage for the timelessness idea to take hold. Because there is no focus in current fashion, no main trend that everything follows to one degree or another, there is this notion that a style from any fashion period as far back as anyone cares to look (which, as it happens, seems to be only about a century at most) is still stylish, and since it's decades old and still acceptably fashionable, it must be permanently so.

There are problems with both of these ideas, but I think they're from different angles. I've already explained why Permanent Style as a concept is a fallacy: the notion of permanence in fashion is a recent invention of amateur revisionist fashion historians. Thus "Permanent Style" is no more or less than the current trend in men's fashion. It's an attractive idea; it pairs nicely with the movement toward better-made, longer-lasting products, since a pair of shoes that lasts forever is no good if it's hopelessly outmoded in a few short years.

The problem is that those "timeless" shoes will be boring after a while, and we'll want something new, at which point, I suppose, the Permanent Style movement will be pushed off into its own little category to be retained by its most passionate supporters.

This proliferation of categories does give people more choices, and it's harder to be completely wrong in aesthetic matters these days, but a person can certainly be uncool. It's just that the criteria are subtler, and everything hangs on execution. A fellow who posts a picture of himself on a style forum is more likely to be accused of "trying too hard" than probably any other insult, which makes me think that apparent effortlessness is the current ideal in the absence of a more specific fashionable silhouette. "Trying too hard" has never been cool, but now it's almost the only way to be uncool.

So do whatever you feel like, as long as you do it well. And make sure that the effort you put in doesn't show.

Stuck here

Well, I'm stuck in America, and indeed in this town, for the foreseeable future. This is a Bad Thing. I wanted to study Historical Linguistics at the Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany, and short of that, to study the same subject in the US. I still want that, but without a scholarship (I've been rejected by all of the institutions to which I applied), it is impossible.

I do of course want to be in a foreign land, surrounded by exciting and exotic things and people, conversing in strange tongues with ease, but the exoticism will only get me so far, I know. The novelty will wear off, I will be in need of friends and familiarity, and I will experience real loneliness.

But the thrill of living in Europe is only one reason I want to go to Berlin. I want to feel like I'm working toward my dreams. I need to know that even if I'm struggling, even if I stumble on my metaphorical path to wherever it is I think I'm going in life, at least I will know enough about the nature of my quandary to be able to work toward a solution. I guess I'm saying I need my problems to be ones I understand and can solve, rather than ones that I neither comprehend nor feel capable of solving.

I've felt for a while now that I am not really good at anything anymore. I was always a really good student and excelled in school. That was fine until I graduated and found I have no idea how to put my studenting skills to use outside of an academic setting. I've been taking a course or two at a local university these past few months, and in addition to giving me something to do besides wallow in my inadequacy at acquiring and retaining jobs, it has reminded me just how good I am at being a student. I had forgotten that I was able to do anything well at all.

The realization that I am not in fact a complete waste of space (that is sadly not facetious) has done wonders for my state of mind. I've stumbled on a secret to a happy life: do what you're good at. I'm sure I'd been told that before, but it didn't quite sink in until just recently. As I was growing up, I was in school, and since I excelled at school, I was happy, but once I'd graduated from college, I was lost. I have either been unemployed or had jobs I hated. I hated the jobs I've had since college because they made no use of my real skills and required me to be strong in exactly those areas where I am weakest.

Thus it is all the more important for me to get back to my education. In order to spend my life indulging in my strengths (learning, explaining, making connections), I need to get another degree or two. And, conveniently enough, the very pursuit of further education will help my self-confidence immensely, for reasons I have explained.

That is why the news that I won't be starting any degree program at all this fall, let alone the one in the world I really want, was so particularly soul-crushing. I've been hesitant to post about it, because I generally don't like pouring my negativity and depression onto the internet for all to see (although I can't imagine my audience is very large; I don't tell anyone I have a blog unless directly asked since I'm not sure it's really worth reading).

I suppose the way to get through this must be to view this coming year as an opportunity for growth rather than another year wasted before I can begin my real life. We all make our own luck (I heard on the radio recently that people who see themselves as unlucky do less to avoid risky situations [they figure terrible things are going to happen regardless of their actions] and are less likely to survive serious illnesses), so it's crucial to see things in a positive light. As the venerable Ace Ventura once said, it's all psychological.

And truthfully, I'm doing better than I would have expected.

A resemblance

Jon Hamm

Gary Cooper

Semantics

I'm tired of people saying 'that's just semantics' in disagreements as a way to lessen tension. It's basically saying 'oh, it's only a matter of what you meant by those words you said.' Semantics is all about what words mean, so clearly that's going to matter when people talk.

Semantics: a big deal, whether we admit it or not.

That'll be the title of the next book about semantics that I write.

I'll write that one right after my Sue Grafton/Isaac Asimov mashup novel I is for Robot.

Lambda is not the same as Alpha

I often wonder how Kia cars are marketed in Greece. After all, their logo uses a Λ instead of an A. Λ is the Greek L. In my head ΚΙΛ sounds like 'kill', although it might be more like 'keel'. I don't know modern Greek.

Anyway, this happens quite a bit all over the place, though usually it doesn't make a pronounceable word. But it's always a little irritating. To me.

Lay off JFK

People keep blaming John F. Kennedy for "killing" the hat in popular fashion. This is either slanderous or libelous (depending on the medium), because the hat was already in decline in the 1930s (I've seen hat sellers' publications from that decade that had suggestions for convincing people to wear hats again), so I tend to blame Cary Grant more than anybody else. He was charm itself, but didn't look that good in hats, so he didn't wear them much, thus beginning the decline of the dress hat. This opinion is, of course, no better researched than the one I'm discrediting, but at least it's believable. Cary Grant did look a little silly in hats, and there were definitely fewer hats (at least in the movies) in the 1950s already, well before J.F. Kennedy's time in the White House.

JFK definitely wore a top hat to his inauguration, too. So don't believe that ugly rumor either.