Today was a really good day.

My Che class is so good. So so good. My professor has a goddamn wikipedia page. She is brilliant. Today we talked about how every revolution or new social order creates new projects of freedom. It was really really interesting. We talked about how identity is actually an inherent part of persecution, and that it might not really be total liberation just to be able to hold an identity freely. For example, having a gay identity is a fairly new concept. With an identity like that, new constraints are added... now you have to be free FROM violence, intimidation, etc. We talked about if gay marriage is equal to liberation. Sure it would be great, but to be institutionalized by the government will then make it harder for aggrieved people to protest.
In the context of Cuba, it's a big question in my mind when the revolution became institutionalized; it always seemed like an oxymoron to have an established, repressive government STILL call itself revolutionary.
She asked us whether we were involved with any political movements, and we all sort of paused and thought about what a political movement even is. Obama came to mind but a campaign is very different. Political movements in the US have become less visible, but in other parts of the world they are still going strong. We talked about why this is. France for instance has a huge strike going on right now over raising the retirement age from 60 to 62 (a quarter of the gas stations in France don't have gas....). In France the government plays a very different role and there are simply different expectations of what the government should do for its people.

In Art History we started Indian art, which I really like. I think it's so interesting how Buddha was represented in early times. Because he transcended human form and reached nirvana, he wasn't represented anthropomorphically. He was shown as a horse with a parasol above, or with people interacting with an empty chair, or as footprints. I can't wait til we do Islamic art because I am very interested in how these cultures deal with representation of deities. I think Arabic script is so beautiful and I LOVE the way it becomes part of their art. I am very sad that after next week we move on to early Christian art. Jesus Christ, here we come. For many hundred years.

My translation class is great too! I'm reading an essay by Benjamin and one by Derrida. The Derrida one is about Babel and how it's both a proper noun (which at once is not really part of language because it has no MEANING per se, and at the same time integral because how can you have a language without names?) and a word that means confusion, and a word with etymological origins that means "father-god", which is what people called cities back in da day. Basically everything in that class is so fun and interesting. Our teacher has this absurd dead-pan sense of humor. We never know what we will be doing next in terms of the syllabus because he doesn't believe in syllabi. One day he was like, "We're just going to have to tolerate a little uncertainty. This is terrible. If we were in Texas, I would be.....dead." He is wonderful and wears purple ties and has a funny Britishy accent.

My Spanish class could be better but I'm really happy that I'm learning it and even though it's sort of frustrating because we move sort of slowly, I have already learned so much.

AND I love my painting class for so many reasons. One of which being that the TA is MY FAVORITE. He gave a little slideshow lecture last class which was outrageous. Because he is outrageous. I took notes. He told us that our rudimentary paintings are really the most complex paintings and we should go to Chelsea to the galleries and have a WTF moment looking at all the shit paintings. He showed us one of his paintings and told us it was a good painting and that it was "honey-dipped." He said in order to paint well you either need a daily meditation routine or a really reliable drug dealer. He says a lot of really smart serious stuff too. I've learned a lot about how to think about making art from him. I want to be his friend. Some day we will share a cigarette and he will tell me something crazy about skateboarding or Brooklyn or existentialism or how great my paintings are. It will happen. And it will make my life.

The TA in Che is really funny too. I don't know where he's from, but somewhere Spanish-speaking. He has these random outbursts and gets into very heated and emphatic debates with my teacher.

ANYWAY my life is just dandy right now. We went out to dinner at a Peruvian place for Nicole's birthday (again). It was delish. Then we came home and watched West Side Story and made chocolate cookies with chocolate chips and peanut butter cups. And then I tried to navigate the schedules for CMJ which is a big music festival in New York right now and there are A MILLION shows and some of them are free or at least pretty cheap.

THIS POST IS SO LONG BLA BLA BLA READ ABOUT MY LYFE I AM SO INTERESTING ZOMG