The blogger is back.

The last couple of weeks have been remarkably hectic. Here it is in a nutshell: my laptop was stolen, then recovered; a car was towed, then recovered; I was supposed to move into a new apartment on the 1st, now delayed; I sleep on a couch; I started school; I live out of a carry on bag; the post-office has continually screwed up my mail; my financial aid department can’t get anything right and…I can’t wait for it to all be over. Great, so my complaining is over for now—it could be worse.

I spent some time in California recently as many of you may well be aware. Aside from the overall chaos associated with my bi-annual visit, I solidified what I like about the place: friends and family. I still could do without all the obscenely large trucks, the vapid conversations and the fact that I have to drive everywhere—the driving thing quite constrained my ability to imbibe.

The ineptitude of the New York Law School financial aid department means that I am going to be confined to the city for the affliction commonly known as the RNC. Question, why in the hell are they throwing a party in a city where most people really don’t like them? The expected madness is humorous albeit somewhat disconcerting. For example, my institution will close for a portion of the week—just in case.

On a side note, blogger rhymes with jogger—someone I am not. Personally, I’d rather swim.

So I am back at school as I mentioned earlier. A week is done and many more still ahead of me. According to most accounts, the second year is supposed to be easier than the first. So far it does not feel that way, instead it seems like I have more work than ever. The upside is that I enjoy and am genuinely interested in the majority of my classes.

Miss Kitten just told me that this is the soundtrack of now.

Back at the escuela was an experience in shell shock. It felt as if I had never left and the rote dullness of undesired social interaction again reared its ugly head. I am coming to realize that not only is this entire experience an exercise in mental gymnastics and the tuning of my previously thought fine cerebral machine, but it also has a social component. The practice of politics has always been something that serves to leave me feeling disenfranchised and at the same time compels addiction. But politics has always been in the realm of the theoretical for me and when I wanted to escape I could, there was always that option--dealing with it in the microcosm of a school replete with overachievers and egoists presents no viable option for escape.

So I guess the second prong of a legal education teaches one how to interact with all sorts of individuals one finds unappealing. To be redundant, it’s interesting. Take for example the exercise of exclusion. Say you don’t want to play the politic game, don’t feel like hanging out with the same people all the time and aren’t willing to ally yourself with one clique or the other, two things happen. First you are labeled as aloof or a nomad and then the second prong of the treatment is that the very gossip you were attempting to avoid starts to find you in ways you thought unimaginable. That’s when it hits you that you are dealing with a bunch of silver-spooned children who have never really lived life, who haven’t had to know the pains and pleasures of responsibility and who really don’t have much perspective on anything besides themselves. The other option is that you play the game, you let your guard down and do the things that are required, but the same problems haunt you. Inevitably it seems impossible to win; I guess the key is attempting to find some amicable middle ground between the two. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated and if you are finding it hard to relate, think of high-school—it is pretty much the same thing, just with bigger books.

The encouraging part of the whole experience is that there are good people around who seem to be navigating the same morass with alternating degrees of success—those are the people I chose to associate with most.

I just realized that this has become a most long post, which seems to have some cohesiveness to it. I am disappointed. If I write this much I usually prefer that it be a discombobulated mess with keys to solving the mystery in it. I guess that will have to wait for the next.