winged words

why girls go for bad boys

2009-12-03T04:15:54Z

I don't know how perfectly this video answers that question or not, but: Jakob from So You Think You Can Dance. Melts me in a puddle in this dance. Aah, make it stop! This number is so twisted and yet not a moment of it is funny, as even the slightest bit of incompetence would make it. I don't know. But this is brilliance, brilliance.

He can't even give it up and stop smoldering after the stupid dance! Anyway.

In other news, this semester needs to be done. For any parents of mine reading, I am rather thinking of moving at semester from this house... just wasn't what I thought it would be. A girl I know from student government posted asking for roommates to move to Courtyards at semester... potential?

Words I have learned (or at least am in passing terms with) from a 900 level English grad class

2009-11-17T04:54:51Z

Plus many more.

Epideictic.

Reification

Atavistic

Prolegomenon

Aporetic

Melic

Deictics

Epideictic: designed primarily for rhetorical display; "epideictic orations"

Refication: to convert into or regard as a concrete thing: to reify a concept.

Atavistic: reverting to or suggesting the characteristics of a remote ancestor or primitive type.

Prolegomenon: a preliminary discussion; introductory essay, as prefatory matter in a book; a prologue.

Aporetic: tending to doubt

Melic: noting or pertaining to the more elaborate form of Greek lyric poetry, as distinguished from iambic and elegiac poetry

Deictics: specifying identity or spatial or temporal location from the perspective of one or more of the participants in an act of speech or writing, in the context of either an external situation or the surrounding discours

a shoulder to cry on - or something like it

2009-11-04T05:59:02Z

Just five minutes ago, I was listening to one of my roommates crying across the hall. She had taken a long shower earlier - I assume to muffle her tears, but still they weren't spent. Now the girl she shares a room with is making her laugh, and I don't hear sobs anymore.

Two nights ago I attempted something I've never done before, comforting an emotionally distraught guy friend. With girls there's no weird touch barrier. I can sling an arm over her, rest my head against hers. If I know her well, perhaps some motherly stroking of her hair or a hand. But this? - a guy friend standing on my porch at night, who came over immediately after a movie night because he said he needed to see me "right now." I thought it was some kind of romantic come-on until I got a look at his face up close, and saw pain written all over his eyes.

We've had personal conversations in the past, and last summer he asked me out (I said no, not feeling like I wanted to stray into romantic territory with him just then). We haven't talked in months. And yet here he is, falling apart on my porch.

We're standing because the two wicker chairs on the porch are divided by a little wooden stand - too far apart. Yet as he talks and cries my legs begin to cramp, and the annoying outdoor cat jumps on one of the chairs and nuzzles me in the butt.

I suggest we sit down on the porch, leaning against the wall by the door. A couple of my roommates pass in and out during the course of our conversation, and from their expressions I can tell they're intrigued: Ooh, it's R on the porch with a guy... They should have looked at his face closer.

Now sitting, I've solved the proximity/comfort issue, but that doesn't mean decision-making is over with. At one point he leans his head against the wall, eyes squeezed shut and tears straggling out, face contorted in a grimace. I know I have to do something, but a hug or a hand squeeze feels wrong, crossing an impossible barrier I've never had reason before to break. I wait a couple seconds to see if the moment passes. I doesn't. So I break the touch-barrier with the only appropriate option I feel like I have: the manly shoulder squeeze. Almost instantly he expels breath and chokes out, "Thank you for listening."

"Sure," I say, still squeezing his shoulder. I figure that now that I'm here, I can keep doing this for another 5 or 6 seconds before it becomes potentially awkward. I feel so bad for him that I want to hug him, be much closer than the hand on the arm, but since he's bigger I would probably end up with my head on his shoulder, and I don't want the focus of the moment to switch from unloading/me listening to a sudden hyper-awareness of our closeness.

I talk a little bit, but he says over and over that all I really have to do is listen. So my words are generally no good, unless they can dissuade him from killing someone's cat in vengeance. Touch speaks more.

He leaves somewhat calmer, thanking me. I feel as if I've done something. Yet all the way up the stairs to my room, I'm wondering: did I do it right?

It's amazing how much of our lives - particularly when it comes to guy/girl stuff - is scripted for us by movies. There are the cheesy moments that scream out for a kiss, or the dramatic ones that call for a slap. A sometimes non-gendered scenario is that of comforting someone. In The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, Bilbo loses it in front of his adopted son, Frodo: "I'm sorry I brought this upon you, my boy... I'm sorry for everything!" The elderly hobbit begins to weep, and in Jackson's film Frodo silently approaches him from behind and - does the manly shoulder squeeze. Bilbo instantly responds, reaching back to hold on to Frodo's hand.

The other iconic "comforting" scene I can think of is from When Harry Met Sally. Definitely gendered/sexualized. Harry is comforting his good friend Sally in regards to another man. Because they are very close, Harry can engage in intimate comforting behaviors: full-body hugs, stroking, even little kisses on the mouth. This is where the tone of the scene swings in a very different direction. Sally becomes aware of his close, in-drawing presence, and the pleasure both of them derive from these kisses. So she goes for a more serious one, and the scene winds up with the two "best friends" having purportedly a "great" time in bed, even though Sally had been inconsolable only half a minute before. This example is strange because although Harry should have realized that comforting his friend with a kiss wouldn't be the wisest action to take, he was "right' by the movie's logic that views anything that brings the two together as "right." I realized that any judging of the porch encounter by this film one would give me almost no criticism, except perhaps as to the closeness of me and my friend. The scene is too specific to individual people.

I'd still say that we use cinema as a way of scripting things like comforting someone correctly. But I also believe doing something is better than nothing. You can screw up every part of comforting a person, I figure, and yet your presence, your being there will still be a powerful something. You don't have to follow the manual, if there is one outside of therapists' offices.

It's still quiet across the hall.

breaking the silence, or, watching When Harry Met Sally

2009-10-16T04:16:40Z

Notes:

1. Billy Crystal is not a conventionally handsome man. That said, there were at least 5 meltingly good moments where he was incredibly sexy, compared to, say, Twilight in which I'm being hit over the head by Robert Pattinson (sp?)'s cheekbones and yet remain totally unaffected.

2. That said, knowing his voice first from Monster's Inc. is very, very, very strange.

3. Everything Harry said about men and women - they can never be just friends, but they might be able to if both are already in relationships - is my dad's own philosophy that he's been telling me for the past two years.

4. I don't know that Meg Ryan is a really fantastic actress, but I give her all the props in the world for getting through that "faking it" cafe scene.

5. I think I like You've Got Mail a little more. Something clean-cut, less depressing and less questioning. You know that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan stay together, because the cosmic universe deems it. But in Harry and Sally? They could really still end up hating each other. The one point against this is that they showed up in the montage of dim-witted, happily married couples.

6. You have to be incredibly slim, like Ryan, to pull off the hideous jeans and dresses she wore in this movie.

7. Finally, I am really, really getting tired of this particular movie-shorthand for a man proving his love to a woman: list, at the very least, 5 specific, totally random quirks or facts about her. No matter what they are, she is thrilled by your specificity and throws herself into your arms. Example:

"I love that you pick your toenails constantly and don't care where the pieces go. I love that when you eat cake, you always insist on having the last piece. I love all the little pock-marks on your forehead you try to cover up. I love that you always order pasta and then have bad gas for an hour."

Extreme, but, come on, it's overused. Disturbia may be the worst example of this I can remember. "I'm stalking you, but because I'm only giving you non-sexual details about what I'm noticing, that means I'm not creepy and also worthy of your love." GAH!

As for my relationship with this blog - I don't care, and you almost certainly don't, whether I "keep this up," or not. But yet, like a random fall leaf, here you are.

weirdness

2009-08-22T05:12:40Z

Okay, so all my friends are getting engaged and married! Well, not really; mainly people whom I measure my aging by. I've already been to three weddings in that many months; have two more to go (one in which I'm a bridesmaid).

My best friend from junior high is engaged. We don't hang out anymore; the most I've seen her recently was on her way out of a class as I was coming in. Quick hellos, all that. Back in the day, though, we were tight. We filled notebooks with our girlish drawings and back-and-forths. No one could make me laugh like she did.

All a good memory now. She was never longing to get married or anything, though; that's another trend in all this friends-pairing-off thing. I even remember her - many years ago - saying the idea of sex was "gross."

And yes, I did learn of the engagement on Facebook. As I've said before in similar posts, if I announce such a thing to the world in that particular way, please shoot me. I'd rather have people never know I'm seeing anybody than having to watch the actual contortions of my "relationship status" over time until it hits the golden ticket of "engaged" or "married." That's just me. Maybe I'm a snob.

But getting away from the point. All these people that were awkward and little when I was awkward and little are now taking the ultimate maturity-step of marriage and engagement. (Well, perhaps it isn't that for certain celebrities; but generally in real life).

Echoing the title: so weird!

wedding music

2009-08-02T04:38:19Z

This weekend I was thrilled when the opening notes began for the processional of a friend's wedding. I recognized it immediately as my favorite track from the post-rock group Explosions in the Sky's album, The Earth is Not a Cold Dead Place. The song in question, "Your Hand in Mine," is the final track of the album, and one of my favorite songs. I've thought before that a section of it - in the previous video, from 2:30 to 3:06 - sounds like "Canon in D," or another wedding march. The song builds really nicely, and could probably be used for a lot of things. (This is a string version; interesting.)

Wedding music is an intriguing 'genre,' if you will. You have songs like that, and the classical favorites, and then... Shania Twain's "From This Moment On." Sometimes people employ the oldies, as did the aforementioned couple, with the Beach Boys' "Wouldn't It Be Nice" for the recessional.

I'm not sure what I would pick. Something unique, something that sends chills down my spine but hasn't been done to death. "Canon in D" is a timeless melody, and I remember playing it over and over as a kid, but to me it feels overall more portentous and somber than celebratory and enthused.

YouTube is replete with suggestions. Through following classical links, I hit upon Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1, which is just amazingly lovely. Indescribable.

I wish I knew more about classical music. I hear great things about Stravinsky from my literary theory class. I've looked at the classics section of CDs at the library, but with such a thicket of names and titles it's hard to know where to start. I did pick up Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony once - it felt safe because I watched Fantasia a fair amount as a kid. But that's the thing; I keep seeing flying pegasuses and baby colts swimming in rainbow pools instead of the music. Perhaps too iconic?

In any case, I am glad I am not planning a wedding. One thousand and one decisions to make, over half of which I'm sure aren't remembered permanently. Music is key for emotional atmosphere, though, and not a segment to be completely brushed off. Maybe one could just say "screw it" and walk down the aisle to the 1812 Overture. I dunno.

In conclusion, go give Tchaikovsky some love and listen to the Piano Concerto, or something else, and tell me about it.

things are looking up (plus book reviews)

2009-07-10T03:58:26Z

I won't be living at home this fall. *Score!* We've talked about it and as long as I have a job, it's financially feasible for me to move in this house with five other girlfriends. The two jobs I'm going to apply for both fit my major, English, so that's awesome. And I get to sing some more with a songwriter I know - she's heading up this night of songs inspired by the Psalms at the church coffeehouse. I'm singing three of her pieces, which we started work on today. All so good.

I can't think of much more to say, beyond the fact that my new main icon inspires me to say a little about books I've read in class that I recommend:

Bloodchild and Other Stories by Octavia Butler (Seven Stories Press)

Okay, so I only had to read the first story, "Bloodchild." But once you understand what is going on in this story, you're gripped by what the narrator ultimately decides. It's rather graphic in parts, but I'd argue that those sections are crucial for understanding the choice involved in the story.

Very unusual science-fiction, I think, and an able and powerful author.

First sentence: "My last night of childhood began with my visit home."

A collection of short stories by the fabuous Sherman Alexie (Atlantic Monthly Press).

All of these stories are quality. The place you start out at in one of his stories is never close to where you are when the story ends. And Alexie has a gift for character, I think. The book flap claims that in this collection "we meet the kind of Indians we rarely see in literature." Nobody's a caricature; everyone has the quirks and unexpectedness that a real person has.

Some stories, particularly my favorite, "The Sin-Eaters," have a kind of dreamy or surreal feel to them, woven into Indian tradition, which is all beautifully done.

Read something by this man, I don't care what! Probably everything is about this level of quality.

First sentence: "Regarding love, marriage, and sex, both Shakespeare and Sitting Bull knew the only truth: treaties get broken."

Kim by Rudyard Kipling (Barnes & Noble Classics)

I wasn't sure if I was going to like this book, but Kipling shows himself to be a master of prose. His depiction of India rings true. It's not an easy read - many people in class disliked it - but it's meant to be a long story, slowly taken in.

Also you'll want to follow the characters, youthful Kim, the aging lama, or spiritual leader. I have a feeling I need to re-read it; the book is dense with information and ideas.

First sentence: "He sat, in defiance of municipal orders, astride the gun Zam-Zammah on her brick platform opposite the old Ajaib-Gher - the Wonder House, as the natives call the Lahore Museum."

Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale (Anchor Books).

Oh, this is sooo good. I love me some dystopian novels, and this one's right up there. The narrator is practically a female slave and we never learn her "real," or former name; she is called Offred - "of Fred," and is used basically as a vessel for pregnancy, producing children.

Quiet though she may be, Offred is blazingly intelligent, and beneath her restrictive clothing she muses on her captors, the world around them and what it would take to be free, or simply survive. Once read, I assure you this book isn't easily forgotten.

First sentence: "We slept in what had once been the gymnasium."

That's all for now.

In the Library

2009-06-20T17:12:58Z

(A piece from last semester I found in one of my notebooks. Enjoy!)

People's faces here are like books. A little weather-battered, too many flapping pages. A bit of a breeze will knock us over privately, and then we return to our pages with the gravity of a monk, checking and re-checking to see if all the old words are there.

In this quiet space, we see - we cannot help but see - one another, and in the spark that is eye-contact a page may shudder, shine or melt into itself (they call this shyness).

That boy clutches his phone, the necessary escape-pod. That girl wears long white socks, reaching up past cargo capris. She will never be cool, I could tell her that, but she had somewhere to be.

"Did you get your information?" a desk librarian asks a man in plaid, wearing a cap. He said he did, something about the census, and then apologetically joked about "someone asking a weirdo question like that."

It is a good day for staying indoors. Water plummets the sidewalks beyond the windows; in here, many fingers tapping at keys provide the water-music. They bend so intently to the screens, as if they held sunlight. Tappity-tappity-tap.

Hands. Hands speak when nothing else will, or does. The woman in gray with fuschia pants tries a sweeping motion, queenly.

Now the boy in the gray across from her takes a card, fathoms it. He grins with accomplishment after holding up his pointer and third finger together, and then cups his right hand into an "O" to show his pleasure.

Again and again the boy laughs and falls back on this cushion like mine, arms crossed lightly, smiling as it he knew everything.

The woman in gray mouths words. The boy counts with fingers, tosses his card to the ground.

Here is speech.

He moves boisterously, yanking his hand about his mouth. In his youth, in his impatient confidence, he is handsome.

Cards shuffle across the table. He keeps grinning, sliding back into his seat as if to say, "This is all too, too easy." Now he's utterly slouched. I love him.

Perhaps he reminds me, in his small stature and dark head of hair, of another boy I once loved. But that boy was not joyous, not eagle-eyed facing the world. He did not walk like a soldier about the stacks.

I love this currency of speech. A man in a white and blue shirt stops, his face registering surprise, and in one even gesture tells the small group "hello."

Now the three of them are bent close over the table of cards. They whisper over the close space. The boy turns his beautiful head, eyes sharp.

- - -

It doesn't really have an ending, but I recall sitting at a nearby couch and writing all this as it came to me. This sign language lesson was very interesting to watch.

antique glass

2009-06-05T15:52:22Z

Photos from yesterday.

-well, this isn't antique glass; it's just old and dirty :P

Other notes from life lately:

-People, by and large, do not change their ways. If you need information from a certain Latin professor, do not be surprised when the e-mail he sends you about independent study is entirely in Latin. As was the syllabus and every quiz and test you took with him some time ago.

-I'm getting addicted to So You Think You Can Dance again. They just got through the 'Vegas' round, and let me tell you: if I were a dancer and in that, I wouldn't have survived that. Stay up all night to choreograph a group dance to perform in the morning? Super-intense criticism and even more intense choreography you have an hour to learn? No, no, and no. People were weeping about every ten seconds.

- I do not recommend Benjamin Button. It's excruciatingly long, the computer imagery on his face makes everything look vaguely fake, and it makes you think about death, dying, and the aging process the entire time. Nope. Didn't like (although it did help me to understand why people equate Brad Pitt with male beauty. The buildup to him looking young and awesome is sooo long that I think you'd tend to come to that conclusion in almost any case).

-Summer class starts next week. As it's a history course, I'm not doing my usual geeky thing and looking at the reading materials ahead of time. But perhaps that's because I have material still to finish from the last semester.

-I planted my flower seeds finally, nasturtium and zinnias. It will be exciting if/when they sprout, and blossom. I would love to photograph something I actually grew.

bird-lovers??

2009-05-25T03:24:14Z

I went exploring in a back pasture the other day, taking pictures, and happened upon this really tough, intimidating-looking bush.

The thing had branches coming out of it from everywhere, kind of like a bush trying to be a tree.

As I'm bending over, inspecting it for photographic possibilities, a bird silently swoops out by my ear and sails away without a peep. That's weird. Maybe, I thought to myself, she was sitting on a nest.

I poked in there and, to my surprised delight, it seems there was just enough square footage to allow for one.

By the way, this is me blindly sticking my camera above where I know the nest to be and hoping to get something cool. I wasn't prepared, however, for the two types of eggs in there - the fat speckled ones, and the smaller white ones.

Does it mean another bird took over that particular nest? Does she then have to deal with the other brood - perhaps kill them? Or you could wait and let the speckled vs. the non-speckled hatchlings duke it out in the nest (quite the scene, I would imagine). Not too hard of a guess who would win there: big speckled dino eggs all the way, baby, unless appearances deceive.

Still, strange. Anyone know?

And while I'm thinking about birds, that Nelly Furtado song blipped into my brain: "I'm like a bird, I want to fly away..." My sister and I like taking out one of the nouns that follow: "I don't know where my home is, I don't know where my phone is." We like the idea of Nelly singing so plaintively about her cell phone missing - something, I guess, that I could do at times, but definitely wouldn't set to music.

thought-fox

2009-05-19T03:42:22Z

I wish I had a nice thought-fox right now, something easy I could kill that would make me write and exorcise all my demons, all my insecurities.

In college (thus far) I have never taken a creative writing class. One turned out to be sort-of about creative nonfiction, which wasn't too hard. I have Intro to Creative Writing in the fall. Funny, an English major just dipping her toes into it.

I would have struck a parenthesis in there after "just," but except for a few poems written on the Texas coastline, up in my crude bunkbed lying on a sandy sleeping bag, I don't write stories, or poems. They frighten me. Theoretically, I'd like to be good enough to publish work here or here or here, anywhere with a masthead and cool cover design, but I no longer put forth the effort. Why earlier and not now? Is it that, like Hughes' tormented speaker in "Thought-Fox," I'm scared of what's hiding in my own "midnight moment's forest"? It's really dark in there, or at least it appears that way. All it would take is to watch someone sauntering through my own particular darkness, my own loneliness, crash down all my ideas of who I am and how I work for it to stop, and my pen to start. That's how the poem works.

I'm attempting to write a paper for the end of a class about that one, that Hughes one I linked to. I'm not entirely sure what happens at the end. I could write about the differences between the animal and the human, the biblical references I see, the blanks and spaces scattered throughout. It's for a literary theory class, and I guess it's supposed to be difficult, or at least weird. So I'm trying. I'm writing the outline, and the thing is that that alone is becoming as scary as writing a short story. I'm avoiding it. I'll probably behave as usual, submitting somewhere right up to the deadline, making things harder than they are.

But the blank page is terrifying. You can look at someone else's lovely, (seemingly) meandering prose/poetry and think, "Why don't I have thoughts like that? I guess I'm not very deep." You can look at this space in the LIveJournal box for more than two seconds, think, "Things are happening - all around the world they're happening - and to me, but I have absolutely nothing to say about it."

And it feels like you should be able. I want to create, dangit, not write about the frustration of a blank page and how people tie that in with all their other problems until it feels like they'd kill something before coming up dry, again.

I wish I could play guitar. I love singing. It would be another way to wander out into the snow, feel out the landscape. But I'm afraid I'd just be another lumping Shadow, out where I don't belong. I belong up in the cloistered little room where you can see only far enough to be jealous, only enough to know that your midnight forest is a pretty dark one, and your eyes are useless.

But I'm still sitting there, aren't I? My fingers are still poised, still moving. The story may not be written, but I don't know whose I'm speaking about. There's a reason people compare creative composition to labor, to giving birth. Maybe something's there, maybe there isn't. Today, tomorrow.

But I can do better than a bullet hole in the head as an inlet for thought. I will look at the flowers I photograph, mindless, endless beauty, and not hate it for being the poetry I fail to write.

And I will finish that outline, and that 8-10 page paper on the Hughes, despite all else holding me back. I will write my scribblings (this week, probably just another assignment for a pastels class, labored and gritty, maybe worth saving, maybe not. I will, though.) I won't try so hard. I'm going to think about that fox, and instead of trying to be it, I'm going to leave the table with the clock and typewriter for a while. I'm going to be out in the elements, where only God can hear me.

a little girl's wings

2009-05-13T16:08:27Z

In honor of this girl's birthday, I'm posting some pictures I took about a month ago at her house.

When you're little, it's all about the wings :) (Mine were a bit scruffier than hers at her age :))

- playing with a balloon

She comes from a musical family.

pastel happiness

2009-05-12T02:02:33Z

The people who sell pastels, I've learned, want you to believe happiness comes in every of the 10, 15, 23 or 56 shades they offer.

Maybe it's true.

I'm taking an "Expressions in Pastels" class, and today went to a crafts store to load up, my teacher's list in hand. I had to ask for help, after being distracted by the poster prints section (a painting of a woman with flowers by Diego Rivera caught my eye). Now everything is placed on a folding table downstairs. Giant board so I can work outside = check. 3 charcoal pencils, 5 large colored sheets of pastel drawing paper, a pastel drawing pad, check. The box of pastels.

I could have gone for one collection that was around $80, or one at around $56. I went with something humbler, and ended up laughing as I pulled out the slip of paper serving as directions:

"Using purest degree of pigment, Gallery Semi-Hard Pastels have unsurpassed bright colors and highest degree of light-fastness."

Having worked in a Japanese restaurant, I recognize the blunted syntax of someone for whom English isn't a first language. I'm just a little confused - how can pigment be "pure"? Isn't pigment pigment?

"Light-fastness" - that's actually very beautiful. My pastel chalks have "light-fastness" against paper, like something out of Genesis.

They offer 120 colors in full: Cadmium red, Vermilion, Prussian blue, Cobalt blue, Deep phthalo blue ("phthalo" - may be a good one to hoard away for a Scrabble game, if it's a word!), True green (true green?), Deep chromium oxide green, Viridian, Hooker's Green (I'm serious - and it looks like a pretty mellow tone), May green, Light green field yellowish (again, serious), Pale bister, Van dyke red hue, Light flesh, Medium flesh, Dark flesh (all salmony pinks), Warm grey I - VI and Cool grey I-VI. As well as others that don't strike my poetic ear the same way :)

But I'm curious where the words come from: bister, delft, phthalo, viridian, carmine.

All with "highest degree of light-fastness."

***

I have my first assignment to do, and it will involve another cool word: "scumbling." It's very evocative of what your fingers and the pastel stub actually do. From the handout: "...scumbling involves using the side of the stick in a loose motion to create a thin veil of color which doesn't entirely obliterate the one underneath. The effect is rather like looking at a color through a thin haze of smoke." The picture closeup of a hand "scumbling" fits a little better for me. The fingers drag a pink stick into a series of mazy lines, which, on the brown paper, resemble bark.

Three pictures below show "finished" projects. One, "scumbling light over dark," looks like birds in flight. The two others look like tree foliage and water respectively.

I'm really going to enjoy this class.

weird days (cloud days?)

2009-05-08T03:52:32Z

Do you ever feel as if you have days which can only be described as 'weird'? Today was. Whilst friends post things like, "donedonedonedone" on Facebook, I have this critical theory paper hanging over my head that scares the bezonkers out of me. (I don't know how that adds to my day, except that - oh yes! I was on campus.) I talked to my advisor, whose first words were, "What's wrong? You look so worried. I'm so concerned!" (I'm serious.) I convinced her I was fine, and she tried to drudge a schedule for me out of, sadly, what's poor pickings; I've missed my upperclassman early registration days by a lot. A lot.

And then I had a counselor appointment to kill time until. I ran into (intentionally) a Latin prof I haven't seen since last fall, and he was carrying about five books with one arm. He looked extraordinarily educated and intelligent, leaving a meeting with some grad-dish looking folk. I felt rather superfluous, asking about independent study.

Then I found a spot outside and read. I ran into a girl who helped me realize that not-nabbing that awesome summer-and-fall schedule is, in the long run, really not the big deal my brain is making it. I have a slice of rather suspicious pizza, and keep getting distracted by some rather fantastic cumulous clouds. I've written about clouds before, I believe, but these were monster clouds, every gradation of grey and super-bright at the edges, as if there's an angel sitting just over the edge. On my way back to my car (I was lost for about 5 minutes, trying to find it in the garage, which always seems to happen to me), I took pictures of the clouds. And the back of a professional window-cleaner. And some tulips past their prime, some graffiti, and some nooks and crannies in the parking garage.

In this mood I like to think I am being really arty, that these shots, edited to be really grungy and contrast-y, will end up in a book somewhere with, I don't know, Allen Ginsberg poems (who the girl my friend mentioned today, when talking about options for post-college life. Ginsberg apparently says choose nothing, and have that be cool, which she wants to do). The thing is, a) a lot of the time I'm full of myself, and b) it turned out I grabbed my parents' camera, which gives me even less control over the camera's operation than does my normal one.

All day I've just wanted to float away on a cloud. No more literary theory, people graduating (including my sister), nothing. Trail it away like a balloon. Climb up past the highest level of the parking garage, where you're level with the banking buildings and can see the tower by the library, and these little steeples that always look like the cutest things in the world. Just go, airily disdaining the man washing windows and the surreptitious-looking one jamming to some beats, and turn your head against the sun (it was bright today). Feel the expanse of cloud; a million little sizzles of cold. Look down through the whiteness, remember planes, and laugh. You can come home whenever you please.

poetry

2009-05-04T03:20:59Z

I wrote some poetry whilst in Texas; very odd for me. Usually the idea of writing poetry is nerve-wracking enough that I don't begin. But there were too many rich things to think about while I was there, on the Ike-devastated coast.

The first is about the beach in Galveston. The second is in remembrance of a freaky tree on the corner of the street.

Her footfalls vanished with the water
From here, she may
Have walked on air.
Were she here now, she'd be Jesus.
On that ghost-beach, that invisible
      strand, did she
      pick shells, taste sand
      hear the gulls' mournful cry?
      Was she aware of her limbs and bones?

Now, girls in bikinis sunbathe
on mudlike sand brought by truck.
It isn't much of a beach.
Their toes rest on crushed shells
Pink and yellow like a baby's arm.

The foam races forward, stops,
    recedes.
The ocean exhales.
The gulls reel.

This insistent life will sing its song.
Shutting
Off the sound would be
Like stopping water from a spout.
It comes.

It grabs.
See the concrete slabs
sliding sideways,
    pulled all angles like
    a girl at her first dance.
It is no dance,
though one acknowledges the music.

The trees know.
This one out front
has seized every square inch
    available to it
with a seething mass, an incredible root-system.

It mimics lava, roils of volcanic rock
Glittering and black, impenetrable,
   though apparently a living thing.
It was the first thing that met
   us when the bus stopped.

This is what it takes to survive here,
   says the tree.
You must become a joke, a wonder
a non-living thing
To hold on to your own six feet of earth,
this would-be home.

Some pictures, finally, from the trip. Local churches, as you can see below, are a major force for change. This one, which I helped sort donated clothes at, was holding what they called "Grace-Mart": free clothes and food to anyone who needed it. Quite often people would wander around the premises, asking when it would be open.

A Salvation Army just down the street was dealing with its own deluge of donations. These "packages" of clothing are going to needy people overseas. Only the best of the donations will end up in the store. We helped sort here too.

Lots and lots of donated shoes.

We also spent considerable time making-over the church we stayed at. Playground equipment, no matter how poor, received a rather Ronald McDonald kind of treatment - fresh costs of red and yellow paint - and we also did plenty of other painting projects and general upkeep things all over the house.

I made friends with an insane dog at a lady's house, where we cleared out brush and generally got dirty. All the guys kept commenting on how they'd never felt like such a "man" before, what with manually breaking down rotting fences and "conquering trees." Guys are interesting.

And thus concludes my Texas post. I'd love to include more, but there's only space for so much.

what happens when you get old

2009-04-24T04:44:10Z

I was driving home tonight when my cell phone rang. It being past 10 and I, rapidly approaching a rather finicky intersection (can they be?), spoke a bit brusquely on the phone, saying I was on my way home.

"That's fine," my girlfriend said quickly. "I just wanted to let you know... I'm engaged!"

Like an idiot, my first word was "WHAT?" Then followed the congratulations, the exclamations, quick questions of what had happened that evening. But it is undeniably bewildering. I remember when the two first started dating, the fear in D's normally irrepressible eyes. I watched them together after they made 'the leap' from friends to something more - no real difference in their behavior that I could see. It was all very natural.

I met D graduating high school, and then recognized her name in a roster for a college English course a couple years later. Even though the common joke was that she and J were like an old, married couple, bickering away, I could never tell for certain whether she was smitten or not. Yet, whenever I asked how things were going between the two of them, she'd grin broadly and say everything was great.

And now she's wearing a ring.

It's a whole different level of playing field from what I and my closest circle of friends go through. We have our crushes, our boy woes, sarcastic declarations to join or form a nunnery.

As much as we complain, though, I don't yet want to be in the group wearing rings and flipping through bridal magazines. Yes, I turned 22 on Tuesday, but I still know so little about who I want to be and what I want to do. In the meantime, I'm amazed that people find one another, get together and do the whole song-and-dance of marriage in America. The small tastes of romantic love I've had in my life have convinced me there is nothing like it on earth, but the potency of it hearkens to the words of Solomon: "Do not awaken love before its time."

I hope not to. In the meantime, I'm going to be thrilled and dazed at how things have turned out for my friend.

soothing things

2009-04-18T18:56:00Z

For some reason, this is what I feel like doing with this post.

-Soothing writing:

"The Day is Done" by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

"Such songs have power to quiet
The restless pulse of care
And come like the benediction
That follows after prayer. (...)"

The whole thing is so lovely. I underlined and wrote notes all around it in a high school English textbook. Every part of it is like a lullaby.

The Velveteen Rabbit by Margery Wiliams

This is one of those classics that is never, never going away.

-Soothing pictures:

Taken by me. Do not use without permission.

This is my home.

From a recent walk in the park.

Perhaps my favorite picture of this girl. If only all of us could be so delighted at managing to balance a bowl on our heads. :)

Campus trees in bloom.

Kids on the beach in Galveston.

rest

2009-04-14T23:46:10Z

What do you do when you have no classes, no job responsibilities, absolutely nothing hanging over you except what's in your own head?

That's the situation I've found myself in the past week. I spent Easter with grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, even went along with my uncle to bottlefeed a calf. (K had me let it suck my fingers - first it feels like you're going to die, with that insistent sucking mouth, tongue and teeth, and then you just laugh). I've watched things bloom, including a giant pink amaryllis plant that opened four blooms over a period of about a week.

What I haven't said thus far is that this magnificent amaryllis was sitting on the front desk of a hospital unit, and I was able to watch the pink and white petals unfolding because I was there myself for seven days.

My classes are "Incomplete"s right now. A couple of professors have been really lovely in expressing their concern and well-wishes; so have my friends. You don't normally wish for episodes that show "who your friends are," but anyway, everyone is being very kind and patient in waiting until I'm ready to see everyone again.

I could list a hundred reasons why I spent a week in the hospital, but that wouldn't be the best use of my or your time. Let me say, though, that it's all too easy to buckle under life's pressures, especially when you choose to stand on a shaky foundation at best.

"Therefore I tell you, do not be anxious about your life, what you shall eat or what you shall drink, nor about your body, what you shall put on. Is not life more than food, and the body more than clothing? Look at the birds of the air: they neither sow nor reap nor gather into barns, and yet your Heavenly Father feeds them. Are you not of more value than they? And which of you by being anxious can add one more cubit to the span of his life?" (the words of Jesus, Matthew 6:25-27)

Anxiety generally characterizes my life. Driving, I worry about the vehicle behind me. Walking down the street, I cast suspicious and nervous looks about me. It's difficult even to sit still on the couch and read a book; my mind is in such snarls.

Yet somehow I know everything is going to be okay. I take God at his word when he says that those "who labor and are heavy-laden" can come to him and receive rest. It's so hard not to listen to everything else, saying, You're missing this! You're missing that! You need to go to class, exercise, count calories, keep all appointments with friends, stop being so weak!

But in the face of the love of God and my family, these voices have no place to stand.

Even on days like this one, where I slept 60% of the time.

Somehow, I know it will be okay.

-the first of my grandma's tulips

quick update...

2009-03-25T17:00:08Z

Hey all! (Family in particular :)) I'm back from the trip, a bit tanner, a bit stronger, perhaps? :) It was wonderful to have a week-long break from everything and see a new place, particularly the Gulf Coast of Texas. Very interesting, warm, and likeable people in Texas. I particularly enjoyed meeting en elderly lady who sprinkled "y'all"s more liberally through her speech than anyone I've ever met!

I can't wait to share more, along with pictures, but I have an interview at 3 today... yes... All I can say is that I have nothing to lose by going, so, I am.

Really, really good things are happening in my life, I know this for a fact. If you've come alongside me in any way - particularly passed along words of encouragement, a hug, whatever - I want to thank you for it. I'm thinking about so many things.

Have a good day!

-R

sprint to a kind of finish

2009-03-13T04:43:12Z

Hey everyone! As most of us college-aged people are aware, spring break begins this weekend (and for some lazy folk, just a tad earlier than that :)). Having spent comparatively little time as a full-time, sometimes-resident college student, I've only experienced one spring break thus far, last year, and I don't believe I did anything. Not happening this time. Saturday I am hopping on a bus with 20 other people and going to Texas to help with hurricane cleanup for a week. It's funny because my dad gets very into the idea of helping me gather all the right work clothes and other necessities; I can even, he says, wear the mold face protector that my mom says looks "alien." My mother, for her part, looked up the last time I had a tetanus shot (1999) and wants me to get a new one in case I step on a nail.

I love my parents :)

So it should be interesting. I plan to pack plenty of double-A batteries for my camera. We'll be doing construction and demolition work, which should definitely be interesting, although we're told experience is not a necessity. Ah well. Perhaps I will emerge with a tan.

That last sentence makes me think of the song "The Fear" by Lily Allen. I really like it, for some reason. I love how the lyrics can be utterly self-deprecating but at the same time entirely serious. The cool techno sound doesn't hurt either.

Ciao.

cute as a bug

2009-03-04T16:44:29Z

Since I discovered a new editing program on my computer I've been going back through old photos and seeing how they turn out.

These are from last summer. I can't wait for spring and the return of the many delightful bugs/creatures that grace our backyard - a sampling of some of the odder ones:

This guy, however, is straight out of a children's book. He's like the protagonist. He needs a cute name.
(photos from last summer)

Seriously, cutest little bug I have ever seen. Particularly the antennae.

So, in homage of Cute Bug, spring needs to be here.

learning how to fail well

2009-03-02T04:01:04Z

I lack the energy to make this exciting and well-written, but this is the story: within the last week or two, I made a huge blunder - several, really, maybe 6-8, just not all the same size - in one article for the beat I'm covering. The group it concerned got mad. Reeeally mad. Mad enough that some were talking about conducting a re-vote just so they could get a new article.

I flubbed some numbers, was the main thing. Made this fee look twice as large to readers as it is in reality. And blah-de-blah, this article is one of the few times people actually care about this group, yada-yada I'm screwed. I was unhappy with how my paper handled the situation; I did not know about the mess that went down until late in the afternoon. My editor-in-chief was actually summoned earlier to a private meeting with some head honchos to go over the whole thing.

I felt horrible, I cried (actually sobbed, later; they say you're not supposed to drive while emotionally incapacitated, so I got it all out); my dad called me from his work a few days later to mildly freak out about the letters to the editor concerning my article that were printed.

Now, mind you, a lot of this is waay out of proportion. I actually got a lovely message from one of the people the article concerned apologizing on behalf of some of the others for their behavior, thanking me for doing what I do. And that was lovely and upstanding. I cried again. I also considered quitting my job.

I no longer am. In my mind, the worst - the worst - has already happened. A large body of people were incensed at me, including, possibly, a lovely woman who assists the large body of people whom I really don't want to upset either. I had people suspect me of "maliciously attacking" them. I had multiple letters to the editor written about me. I was inadvertently made to feel like crap by the people I work for.

And, thank God, this too has passed.

I've done a series of pieces since then that I got many good, affirming responses on; people are not being cold or non-responsive to me, so perhaps they've moved on as well. And I've learned some mind-bending lessons about responsibility, laziness, and the demands of good reporting. I'm starting to actually weigh the benefits of doing things a little ahead of time, of just going ahead and doing them instead of letting them slide.

I'm proud. I'm proud that this whole fiasco did not break me, that I handled it - I feel - with integrity. I made my apologies, I'm trying to mend my ways. And I'm not quitting over it, or in a kind of snide fashion because of things associated with it. I have lessons I can carry the rest of my life.

Thank goodness that the things you write are not you, as Anne Bradstreet so wonderfully knew. I can be separate from my own little shriveled children as I send them out into the world, though I must try to make them presentable.

It's a great gift, really. I must do my job and do it well, and if I screw up, admit I'm human and go on. What more can I be anxious of?

So, readers, do the scary things. Try things. I can promise you that the worst thing will not end you or even stop you, not if you have friends or family around you, not if you understand your own motivations. As my section editor told me tonight, sometimes the only way to learn certain things is by failing.

The important thing, I think, is failing well, because you're going to in any case.

found letter

2009-02-16T05:16:01Z

I was browsing through a sidewalk sale at a local independent bookstore one day and picked up Dominick Dunne's Another City, Not My Own. I noticed a thick sheaf of paper stuffed inside its front jacket leaf. Pulled it out, expecting no more than exam notes.

Instead I opened a 4-page tribute to this woman's daughter, who died from complications of bulimia. I showed it to the cashier, who said they've found pretty odd stuff in books before - ancient lottery tickets, things like that - but nothing exactly like this.

I took it home. This is how it reads (be warned, it is very heartfelt and may well make you cry):

"In Memory of Jennifer Kelly 8/15/79 12/24/97

I was reading this book one week before Jenny died. I had taken our son Chris to a ski resort. Are (sic, as well as any other following typos) oldest son Todd also met us there. I had every intention of passing it on to Jen, however she died before I could give it to her.

Jennifer, was bright, beautiful and one of the most strongest people I have ever known. She loved soccer, she played on a state champ team called themselves (Estrella's) which means star's in spanish. Jen also played on the Arizona Olimpic Dev. team. She was an awesome Goalie and midfielder truly a gifted athlete. Jen loved boy's, her coaches, teammates, her family, clothes and more clothes, teasing her brother, playing hookie from school, going to the State fair, my cooking, dinner, her jeep, her house, Going on trips, seeing her relatives, Christmas with her Grandparents and Aunt, Her neighbors, the neighbors kids, pictures, her friends, Lord did the girl have friends. She had a whole entourage of people that looked up to her for who she was. She was an old soul, and people gravitated to her. She loved her brothers, Todd, and Chris, both Rick and I it was a very special love she gave us and we will always's treasure it.

At the time of Jenny's death she was working for Bank of America and was sharing an apt. in Phx with a friend. She had a boyfriend that had recently moved to another State.

Jenny was 115 pounds and I knew she was struggling hard with her bulimia. We had her in a treatment center when she was 16 and things seemed much better for awhile. Approximately one month before she died, I made a Dr. appointment for her. She was taking medication, and needed to have blood taken to see that she was doing ok. AFTER she went she told me that everything came back fine. but her potassium level was low. The Dr. gave her samples of potassium and sent her packing. In this book it does give reference to potassium and says that a low potassium level can be fatal. I will carry the guilt of this with me for the rest of my life. I was coming to the realization that Jen would indeed need to go to the hosp. again. I was just waiting for the busy holiday season to be finished.

Her autopsy showed no signs of drugs or alcohol. Jen did not drink or smoke. It said she died of acute cardiac arrhythmia, In lay mans terms her heart fluttered and shortly after that she became unconscious and died. ALONE, In her apt. in Phx. on Christmas eve. She had a new outfit set out for Christmas, and had finished wrapping presents on her bedroom floor.

Life stopped for our family that Christmas eve. life as we know it will never be the same she was a huge part of all of us. It has been the hardest thing we will ever do to loose her to this disease.

My husband had a heart attack and open heart surgery 6 months after she died. It nearly killed him, the blockage was in what they call the widows artery. He was only 45 years old at the time, and We are lucky he is still with today. Todd and Chris and myself all our scars are on the inside, but we are healing, and I have a prayer, no individual should have to suffer from anorexia or bulimia. I don't know if this book is of any help, it has always's bothered me that Jenny never got to read it. One thing I do remember as I lay it down on the table at the ski resort, is that somewhere in those pages I forgave Jenny for her illness. I realized it was a battle going on inside of her mind. and in the end the illness won. I have recently found out that this book has been what the publisher calls remaindered. I can buy this book for 3.00 a copy. I have decided to give any one who desires to read it a copy along with this letter, my purpose is to keep Jenny's memory alive. I think she wants me to share her experience with others, she did not mean to die.

I wish I had the Million Dollar answer as to why people suffer from eating disorders and Mainly WHAT IS THE CURE! The answer to that question may be different for each individual. I know there are some very new drugs out there that are getting some really positive outcomes. I do believe in my heart Jenny's illness was a chemical imbalance of some kind. My only advise I can give is to keep knocking on doors til the right one open's. Seek medical and physiatric help, have faith in God, All these things did not keep our Jenny with us, however I remain hopeful that your ending will be different from ours and that Jenny's death may serve as window of understanding to some individuals suffering from eating disorders.

As you read these pages keep in mind just how fragile life is and God willing something will help you overcome your obstacles and not only finish the pages of this book but also finish your life.

Maybe you'll walk down the isle of a church. and say I do; perhaps have children or a career or both. Be happy, be full, be full of happiness. LOVE YOURSELF! This is a God given right. Your entitled to it. Take it's free. YOU MATTER!!! JEN MATTERS!!! She mattered when she was living here with us, It matters that her heart lives on in another place. I remain close to her in the people I meet, and one day I'll hold her in my arms, untill then I will never forget the gift her life brought me and our family.

God Bless you,

Janet"

Wow. I'm not the crying type, but I can feel that little itch in the nose that says you're at least halfway there.

I kind of want to track down this woman and write a piece about her. Obviously the book her letter migrated into is not the one she speaks of in the letter; I'm pretty sure Another City, Not My Own has nothing to do with eating disorders.

But it's a beautiful letter. This woman, I think, has a writer's soul - in the heat of the moment spelling and grammar may fly out the window, but any technical terms are carefully and defiantly correct. She sounds amazing. And thanks to Google, it's not impossible that I could learn who she is and contact her for an interview.

Anyway, this really touched me. Hope it touched you.

nothing but a watercolor painting

2009-02-09T22:42:59Z

First, a few observations from my second day as an intern, doing what they call "breaking hearts" - stuffing rejection slips in envelopes.

Comment on a story's envelope: "Too earnest, but I could just be grumpy."

In my mind, a story entitled "The Llamas" is always worth consideration.

Another parting comment: "At first I didn't like this story much at all mainly bk the dad reminded me of the perpetually happy guy from those E.D. commercials..."

***

I think I've decided: the best thing about Nebraska is the sky. You can tear down every bit of farm and country land and it will still look like this: skies burnishing into warm gold late in the evening, other times endlessly shifting like a girl's mood. Some days there isn't much to see up there, just a big scape of blue like a robin's egg. Quite often it's full of fleece, like the angels have been out shearing sheep and got a bit too messy - after all, it's the wind, who can blame them? And finally, there are days when the sky feels like being a bit dramatic, like right now.

It was raining earlier, and you can tell - the sky is water-logged-looking, clouds hanging low and smushed a bluish-gray-and-white with moisture. The wind is driving the trees, and, thus, the clouds, crazy. So these fat smushy clouds are bobbing along at a fine pace above the trees in our backyard. Lines of creamish light sail past and are gone, followed by more inky blueishness, nothing but a watercolor painting. I'm trying to watch an online lecture and it's seriously distracting me. It looks like a matte painting you'd see in a movie, maybe something by a Bronte sister.

It's especially eerie at night, the way the clouds form a thin film over the full moon, and you can watch them pass over it, like water slipping over an egg. Everything else is black and troubled-looking, and there's the moon, more or less hidden within the clouds. I told my little sister once that the moon was God's flashlight looking down on us, proof that He was there watching over us. Well, perhaps the idea would work a little better in a place with clearer skies; you don't want God's flashlight in a sky where clouds can blot it out.

-Oh! There is one patch of robin's-egg blue now, just a diamond out of it snipped out of the big woolly mass. Above and below hang shades of gray, thick swirls of white. But something has created one marvelous, bright blue hole in the middle of it, proof that somewhere else it's not raining at all.

The cut-out is thinning, moving past my window (in the space of maybe a minute). Back to waves and splashes of gray, a bluebird hopping on the barbed wire fence, the trees looking harried in the wind.

It's a fine day to be alive.

lit mag love

2009-02-01T18:12:29Z

I am reading/interning for a lit mag now, a nice one, which makes me unbelievably happy/excited. I actually try not to think about it too much, because it's heaven. Friday I got to take out their recycling (yeeah! ;)) and process/ready that day's submissions for reading. I am so hooked. I got to sit at a desk behind a glassed-in window and use the computer; slice open manila envelopes with a mail opener, which I will get better at wielding; and gander at all the free issues of other lit mags that come in the mail, which, when they're old, I can take home for free.

Most interesting of all, though, is getting a sense of who these people are that mail in these bits of poetry or fiction (or a "memoir," as one poor person chose to dub their piece of nonfiction). Some tried too hard to sell themselves in their cover letter. Some had no cover letter. One person used a standard form letter ("I am submitting ____ ( ) pieces of ____ to ______" with the appropriate answers scrawled in in pencil. Ouch. Honey, didn't your mama ever tell you that even in thank you notes, form letters are rude?!). Other people, however, were delightfully brief and professional, and, unlike yet another clueless person, made sure there was plenty of ink in their printer cartridge.

I remember this old essay from Poets & Writers Magazine about this very thing:

"Presentation matters. I know we editors should be above such material, superficial concerns. We're not. At least, I'm not. I prefer a neat, businesslike approach, something to assure me that, though the heart of a savage beats swiftly on the poetic page, the person who slid said page into its envelope is orderly, hygienic, and deeply concerned with my comfort and well-being. Thus she will not blind me with a story printed in ten- or eleven-point type" (Peter Selgin, P&W, May/June 2006).

Ha! In the supply room, our editor made a special point of showing me where the glue sticks are located. "Never - never - lick envelopes," he said seriously, explaining that some of their submitters may very well be crazy and we have no idea where their envelopes come from. "You do not want your tongue anywhere near it."

Point made.

At some point I may graduate from processing mail to doing some light, initial readings. Bring it on, baby, germ-infested envelopes and all.