a biweekly column
By Michelle Ampofo ’25
Managing Editor
I’ve been feeling existential this week, which tends to happen when I’m worn out and sleep-deprived. It’s days like these when I begin to feel like my life is a means to an end. Like I’m stuck in the prelude. In waiting. And it makes me wonder: what makes us think that we control our lives? You wake up in a college that was randomly assigned, walk to the dining hall to eat a meal that’s already been selected, cross the street when the signal allows you to do so, to attend the class that you don’t really like because the one you wanted didn’t bend to accept you. And the next day, it begins again. Life is a sequence of stops and starts. You wake up at a time earlier than you’d like, eat another meal you did not choose, go to class and sit at the only available seat, rush to the club that you are beginning to hate in order to impress adults you haven’t yet met, in order to get accepted into the post-grad you dream will accept you, in order to get the job you hope that you will love. You eat because it’s time to eat. You sleep because it’s time to sleep. You cling to the belief that this present suffering will lead to a future, greater joy. But there is no future. Is the future now? No, it’s the present. What about now? No, it’s still the— And what is this “joy?” Getting married? Working for the rest of your life in a job that you “love?” The exact picture of societal bounds that you claim to reject? There is no solution or escape. Nor is there a private sphere; we are all utterly lost and predictable. Our lives are built on illusions and we accept the ones easiest to believe.
One of my professors said, “We are not agents; at best we are choosers.” So of course, there is the urge to seek a world beyond the one we are contained in, a brighter world. There’s the urge to create a manicured world of our own; one where we have the choice. But do you really want
to choose? Even when your choice may lead to suffering, torment, regret, and agony? A pain that’s heightened because you beget it yourself? We betray ourselves. A sad triumph. Perhaps the only choice is to live, and beyond that null. But still, that choice can be made for us and prematurely (would it be better to die by mistake or with intention? hm?). There is the urge to seek a brighter world. To abandon this one and live life in a place still undetermined. Maybe that is why a friend and I thought it’d be easier to message a cute guy on Instagram (our chosen world) than to approach him in person at a party (the real one). We so desperately longed for an answer. But after days of waiting, nothing came.
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I am writing this at an undisclosed hour of the night.
Read:
“Self-Respect: Its Source, Its Power” by Joan Didion
On Self-Respect: Joan Didion’s 1961 Essay from the Pages of Vogue
What is “self-respect?” To Didion, it is an intrinsic sense of self worth that allows you to live life with love rather than indifference. It is to have an inner understanding that is stronger than outer perception. It is the power to reject false notions. It is the ability to reject self-alienation and reproach. It is the possession of insight. It is the way to comfortably live with oneself. It is to “free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves.”
Anything on Annie Ernaux
The Moving Clarity of Annie Ernaux | Vogue
Annie Ernaux’s Justly Deserved Nobel | The New Yorker
Controlled | Annie Ernaux and the Millennial Sex Novel
I’ve been reading every piece that I can on Annie Ernaux, this year’s Nobel Laureate in literature because it’s proved so! fucking! hard! to find her books online or in stores. Some words I’ve seen used to describe her novels thus far are: “unapologetic,” “unsparing,” “shameless,” “arresting,” “raw,” “memorable,” “controversial,” “distinct,” “relentless.”
I will get my hands on those books.
The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath by Sylvia Plath
(a great book for “sad girl fall”… though I would never explicitly endorse that) Specifically this quote:
“Here I am, a bundle of past recollections and future dreams, knotted up in a reasonably attractive bundle of flesh. I remember what this flesh has gone through; I dream of what it may go through. I record here the actions of optical nerves, of taste buds, of sensory perception. And, I think: I am but one more drop in the great sea of matter, defined, with the ability to realize my existence. Of the millions, I, too, was potentially everything at birth. I, too, was stunted, narrowed, warped, by my environment, my outcroppings of heredity. I, too, will find a set of beliefs, of standards to live by, yet the very satisfaction of finding them will be marred by the fact that I have reached the ultimate in shallow, two-dimensional living – a set of values.
This loneliness will blur and diminish, no doubt, when tomorrow I plunge again into classes, into the necessity of studying for exams. But now, that false purpose is lifted and I am spinning in a temporary vacuum. At home I rested and played, here, where I work, the routine is momentarily suspended and I am lost. There is no living being on earth at this moment except myself. I could walk down the halls, and empty rooms would yawn mockingly at me from every side. God, but life is loneliness, despite all the opiates, despite the shrill tinsel gaiety of “parties” with no purpose, despite the false grinning faces we all wear.”
Plath poses the idea that realizing your potential and “finding” who you are is not entirely a positive thing because it means that you lose your potential (as it is realized). The prospects of who you can become begin to waver. Once we know and accept who we are, we can no longer be whoever we want to be. Fulfilling our potential is actually a loss of potential. At birth, that is all we are—potential. We are infinite beings because we have infinite possibilities and have not yet been influenced by external sources. But aging rots us with specificity, and as we mature, we impose values and rules that constrict us. We begin to live according to social niceties and obligations. We become “stunted, narrowed, and warped.” This imposition continues until death, within which we can only hope to again be freed.
I saw this strikingly similar Stephen Fry quote later that day and took it as a sign: “Oscar Wilde said that if you know what you want to be, then you inevitably become it – that is your punishment, but if you never know, then you can be anything. There is a truth to that. We are not nouns, we are verbs. I am not a thing – an actor, a writer – I am a person who does things – I write, I act – and I never know what I am going to do next. I think you can be imprisoned if you think of yourself as a noun.”
1984 by George Orwell
This suggestion is for me more than anyone; I need to delete Instagram. I have the will, but lack resolve.
Watch:
Balenciaga Summer 23 Collection
Summer 23 (Statement provided by Creative Director, Demna Gvasalia)
Balenciaga released its Summer 23 Collection at Paris Fashion Week recently and it’s caused waves on Twitter. The runway’s set design is essentially a huge mud pit contained inside an industrial office through which models are walking, conceptually escaping from previous war, ruin, and destruction. Demna Gvasalia’s statement about his choice for this show went something along the lines of hating labels, being persistent in finding your true self, “digging for the truth and being down to earth,” “making love and not war,” yadda yadda.
One camp feels like the collection and runway are a mockery of the homeless, poor, actual war victims, and is a clear indication of high fashion’s degradation. It also shows the disconnect between the rich and the working class (after all, this is the company that has sold shoelaces as earrings, allows crypto payment, sells grocery bags for $325 and coasters for $650, and is currently sold out of their “Men’s Trash Bag Large Pouch” in the color black). It’s true—some models look completely ravaged and cracked, others look like creatures (no offense), the show is making a “look” out of soiled and torn clothing, and now is probably not the time to romanticize real pressing issues people are suffering from (despite the theme, Demna oddly makes no mention of the Russo-Ukrainian War).
The other camp sees no issue with the show and has taken the “you either get it or you don’t” approach. In the YouTube comments, a user named “Marina” puts it this way:
“‘To me this show represents the war, and the mud around is the battlefield and people leaving for it. Some have teddy bears, some have their kids attached to them, [and] some have a massive bag to take everything with them. In terms of models, their walk and the order of entrance, it starts with security, then first models look “beaten up” and somehow angry (maybe people protesting against “security” but now having to fight); then models with scars, bruises, teddybears and visibly scared about what will happen (civilians scared, now soldiers), while the last models sit very straight, have more elegant clothes and look majestic (the captains). The last person resembles a butcher,
finishing the job security started, and ensuring that these models don’t leave the “line”. It also forecasts and predicts their destiny.’”
Others don’t really care, with one person on Twitter saying, “Balenciaga’s next show will be in the valleys of the shadows of death. I’m certain of this. Lucifer will even be in the front row. I’m certain of this.” Another tweeted, “That was apocalyptic.” I quite liked it.
I was testing every possible means I could to avoid studying and doing work, and stumbled happily on this. Despite it literally just being a video a man took of New York City from a taxi, something about it spoke to me. I felt a strange nostalgia watching this—seeing people walk
down the street, hearing sounds of traffic and the radio in the background, the decorations for Christmastime, the grainy film. It feels so familiar but also so foreign from what is. The world of this video seems simpler, happier, and it no longer exists.
I turned the internet off and went to Guatemala (ch 8)
This might be the fifth time that I’ve watched this video by the travel and lifestyle YouTuber, Damon Dominique. In this video, he turns off the internet on his phone and books a one way ticket to Guatemala. While there, the only things on his schedule are going to morning yoga and “Spanish school.” He learns about lucid dreaming and astral projection, Tibetan philosophy (you’re not awake in real life until you’re awake in your dreams), slow living, psychedelics, ego death, the effect of foreigners in Guatemala, trusting your inner guidance, and other things. His videos are scenic and beautiful, a reminder that there is much more to life than This.
Black Swan directed by Darren Aronofsky
OMG?????
Listen:
To a Rory Gilmore study playlist on Spotify:
“column two” playlist:
* on repeat
What’s In this week:
a glass of wine after a long night of studying, checking emails during breakfast, morning coffee, taking the shuttle to trader joe’s, calls with mom, going home for the weekend, ordering new books, dinner with friends, ugg boots, fall weather, falling leaves, vanilla scented candles, laying on friend’s couches, eating at foreign butteries, hugging your roommate, “you got this!,” busy weekends, canceled classes, getting chased down the hallway by your TA, your professor showing up with a blown out back, another professor showing up with a black eye, finally getting your TV to work, watching “the bear” on hulu and feeling slightly aroused by a tatted Jeremy Allen White, wondering why you decided to take forest dynamics, having gruesome dreams and sharing them with your friends to see their look of horror
What’s Out this week:
sleep deprivation, spending half of your check the day it arrives, Willoughby’s raising the price of your coffee order, blue state coffee, rex orange county
thank you to all who are reading,
michelle
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Image Sources:
“On Self-Respect:” Vogue, “On Self-Respect: Joan Didion’s 1961 Essay from the Pages of Vogue”
Annie Ernaux: Medium, French Literature for All, “Like Any Other?: Annie Ernaux’s A Woman Story”
Sylvia Plath: The British Library, “Sylvia Plath”
George Orwell, Britannica, “George Orwell”
Black Swan dir. Darren Aronofsky Depiction of nude woman and mirror: Ways of Seeing by John Berger (would highly recommend)
