Dear Alan Rickman and/or Professor Snape,
Yes. Ok. Whatever you want. I love your face, I love your voice, I am in complete thrall to the dark redemption thing you've got going on. Take me somewhere shadowy and penetrate my mind.
Yours sincerely,
Becky
P.S. It's a little weird that you are older than my father, but let's not worry about that too much.
Monday, July 16, 2007
Sunday, July 01, 2007
Touching Base?
I feel the need to post, but I don't quite know what I want to talk about. Maybe it's just that I've read interesting stuff in other people's blogs and I want to have conversations with them, or I just feel like it's time to say something.
Today was lovely. We went to Singing Beach and went swimming (just a little because it was very cold), and climbed barefoot onto big rocks and played in tide pools and made sand castles and had an absolutely stupendous dinner at a little restaurant by the train station. It felt like a real vacation, even though it was just a day.
Today was lovely. We went to Singing Beach and went swimming (just a little because it was very cold), and climbed barefoot onto big rocks and played in tide pools and made sand castles and had an absolutely stupendous dinner at a little restaurant by the train station. It felt like a real vacation, even though it was just a day.
Sunday, June 17, 2007
I love Armistead Maupin!
This is just a celebratory post to delight in the fact that Armistead Maupin has written a new book, called Michael Tolliver Lives. Rachel caught sight of it on display in the window belonging to Porter Square Books during a midnight excursion, and we both got so excited and started jumping up and down. It's narrated by Michael Tolliver, as you might imagine, and he is now 55! And that's all I will say, in case anyone wants to read it. I read it! It's lovely! :-D YAY ARMISTEAD!
Wednesday, June 13, 2007
New Job #1
Here are some interesting things about my new job #1, which is working at the Cabot Science Library at Harvard. (These interesting things are brought to you at this point because I am avoiding doing more work on my new job #2, which is online writing tutoring.)
1. The other day I was shelf-reading, which is when you look at all the call numbers of the books on a shelf to make sure they are in order, and I found a book that was not. So, I was bringing it to its spot, and I saw that it was called Order Out of Chaos. This was so pleasing that I wrote it down.
2. I found a book for Charlotte called Newton's Darkness, which was actually two plays about Isaac Newton! But it was not good, so I brought it back.
3. My boss, before leaving to get a battery for her watch, which is two silver wildcats facing each other, came over and said, "Here. You can read about Polish Jews," and handed me a newsletter called "Gazeta" about Polish Jews.
4. My boss is a Polish Jew.
5. Directly after I wrote #4, a man came up and checked out a book called The Nazi War on Cancer.
6. Downstairs, there is a locked room, and inside there are lots and lots of old to very old books, mostly about engineering. When I first came, I thought that ENG stood for English, but not in a science library, it seems.
7. Also downstairs, there are the kind of bookshelves that all squish together until you press a button, at which time they move very slowly and mechanically to open where you want to go, and I am always a bit concerned that they will suddenly move swiftly and autonomously to squish me while I am walking between them to put back a bound volume of periodicals.
8. My boss has announced that she is going to lose 5 pounds "as if her life depended on it," using some newly approved diet pills. I said I doubt her life could depend on 5 pounds, and she said no, but her clothes could. I conceeded the point.
9. My boss has also said that she might go to NYC for some kind of crazy Japanese hair-straightening treatment that costs $500.
10. Another person who works here is a slight, graceful, quiet Hispanic man who kind of sways when he walks, but subtly. And whenever he uses the computer he brings up all kinds of tango websites and leaves them up when he goes.
11. My boss is named Lidia.
12. Lidia and another boss, named Allen, are having a conflict about how many hours I should work, which is confusing for me.
13. The man who just checked out a book was named Claudiu, which strikes me as highly unusual.
14. Somehow when I was closing up yesterday, I ended up trying to help this young Korean woman understand her registration instructions for whatever program she was doing here, but since she did not grasp all the English and I had no idea what her program might be about or require, we did not get very far.
15. I think Lidia thinks that I'm sleeping with Rachel, because she keeps commenting on my necklace, and when I told her it was my roommate she asked all these questions like how long have we lived together and did I get along with her family and kept saying how GREAT it was, and in other contexts kept talking about gay people, even though it was not really appropriate to the conversation.
16. Even though all these interesting things happen here, I am ready to go home now. But it is only 2:28. I guess I will do my other job.
1. The other day I was shelf-reading, which is when you look at all the call numbers of the books on a shelf to make sure they are in order, and I found a book that was not. So, I was bringing it to its spot, and I saw that it was called Order Out of Chaos. This was so pleasing that I wrote it down.
2. I found a book for Charlotte called Newton's Darkness, which was actually two plays about Isaac Newton! But it was not good, so I brought it back.
3. My boss, before leaving to get a battery for her watch, which is two silver wildcats facing each other, came over and said, "Here. You can read about Polish Jews," and handed me a newsletter called "Gazeta" about Polish Jews.
4. My boss is a Polish Jew.
5. Directly after I wrote #4, a man came up and checked out a book called The Nazi War on Cancer.
6. Downstairs, there is a locked room, and inside there are lots and lots of old to very old books, mostly about engineering. When I first came, I thought that ENG stood for English, but not in a science library, it seems.
7. Also downstairs, there are the kind of bookshelves that all squish together until you press a button, at which time they move very slowly and mechanically to open where you want to go, and I am always a bit concerned that they will suddenly move swiftly and autonomously to squish me while I am walking between them to put back a bound volume of periodicals.
8. My boss has announced that she is going to lose 5 pounds "as if her life depended on it," using some newly approved diet pills. I said I doubt her life could depend on 5 pounds, and she said no, but her clothes could. I conceeded the point.
9. My boss has also said that she might go to NYC for some kind of crazy Japanese hair-straightening treatment that costs $500.
10. Another person who works here is a slight, graceful, quiet Hispanic man who kind of sways when he walks, but subtly. And whenever he uses the computer he brings up all kinds of tango websites and leaves them up when he goes.
11. My boss is named Lidia.
12. Lidia and another boss, named Allen, are having a conflict about how many hours I should work, which is confusing for me.
13. The man who just checked out a book was named Claudiu, which strikes me as highly unusual.
14. Somehow when I was closing up yesterday, I ended up trying to help this young Korean woman understand her registration instructions for whatever program she was doing here, but since she did not grasp all the English and I had no idea what her program might be about or require, we did not get very far.
15. I think Lidia thinks that I'm sleeping with Rachel, because she keeps commenting on my necklace, and when I told her it was my roommate she asked all these questions like how long have we lived together and did I get along with her family and kept saying how GREAT it was, and in other contexts kept talking about gay people, even though it was not really appropriate to the conversation.
16. Even though all these interesting things happen here, I am ready to go home now. But it is only 2:28. I guess I will do my other job.
Sunday, May 20, 2007
Addendum
The guy who tried to help me last night just came by and asked if I had gotten my paper back and how it was going. He's kind.
Hell Hath No Fury...
... like me, right now. I was here in Lamont at 12:30 last night, happily using the last 15 minutes of library openness to put the finishing touches on the 8th page of my paper... why, then, was I here again before 9 AM, when the paper is not in any way due today? Let me tell you.
So, at 12:30, the computer abruptly stopped everything it was doing and told me it had gone into a "Deep Freeze" mode and that the keyboard and mouse were inaccessible. I got up to inquire as to why this had occurred, and discovered that all the student computers had, in fact, done this. I then was told that they do this EVERY SATURDAY at 12:30, but usually they are closed so it doesn't matter, and I guess they just didn't both to tell anyone that this was going to happen. If I had known even 5 minutes ahead of time, I could have saved my document and sent it to myself with NO TRAUMATIC EFFECTS whatsoever... but I didn't. A fairly nice young man came over and tinkered futilely with the computer, during which process an appallingly loud FIRE ALARM started going off literally in my ear for a minute and a half. This is apparently the way that Lamont informs its patrons that it is time to leave, and also permanently damages their hearing. My ear is still slightly achy/itchy this morning.
So I left, with no knowledge of how much paper I had lost, and no copy of the paper on anything but this machine. It was, of course, dark and rainy, though thankfully I had an umbrella. I started stomping home, and as I got to the science center, I caught sight of a very drunk young man in something like a slightly oversized suit jacket. And other clothes too, but not a whole suit. He was walking along, swerving all over the path like I've never seen, totally alone. So at first when I saw him I was nervous, not certain of what he was doing or what was going on, but as he got past me I realized, as he stumbled over to the rope that bounds off the grass and then confusedly to a bush, that he was probably totally disoriented and trying to go home. But in this state who knew if he even knew where his home was. I really didn't know what to do. I didn't want to approach him in case he was agitated or scary, and even if I had I wouldn't have known where to take him if he told me he lived in X dorm, but I also didn't want him to keep wandering around and get hypothermia, or stumble into the road, or just fall asleep with alcohol poisoning or something.
So I followed him. It was a bit awkward, since he kept stopping and drifting off in different directions, or just standing there for a long time, but I tailed him all the way back to the other end of the yard. At one point there was a hopeful moment when he seemed to be veering towards the door of what I hoped was a dorm, but it was short-lived, and the next thing I know he was, in fact, stumbling into the road across from the Au Bon Pain, heading on out into Harvard Square. Now I really didn't know what to do. It didn't make sense to follow him all the hell over Cambridge, but it was stupid to leave him now after all that, and when he was potentially in a more dangerous situation.
I was hestitating on my side of the road, when a shadow figure sort of loomed up toward me out of the darkness... and it turned out to be a nice, sweet-looking young man in a big bulky coat who wanted to know when the buses stopped running. For no reason I understand except that I wanted to give him hope or something, I said that I thought they were still running (I actually didn't have the slightest idea) but that I knew the subway had stopped, or stopped around now, or something. When I looked up again I saw that I had lost the drunk boy, and so I decided to go over to the ABP, which apparently is open very late, and ask them if they had seen him, and also if they would call the police. I should interject that my phone had run out of batteries in the early afternoon. As I made it over there, I saw there was a policeman standing in the doorway! I went over to him and explained the situation. He said he had seen the drunk guy and wasn't sure what was going on with him, but, after ascertaining that I didn't know him or where he was supposed to be, he told me that he would check up on him and help him get home, and disappeared purposefully around the corner.
So I continued walking home. At this point my feet and the bottoms of my pants were extraordinarily wet, and I was extraoridinarilly agitated. Being outside in the middle of the night by myself was NOT AT ALL acceptable, and now I had an even longer walk ahead of me than I normally would. At one point I gave up and hailed a cab, only to find that the cab driver didn't know where Beacon St. was. Now, under normal circumstances I could have told him how to get there, most likely, but at this point I was so at the end of my rope that I wasn't sure I could think that clearly, and I also wasn't sure that I wanted to get in a cab with a driver who didn't know where Beacon St. was. It's an enormous street! It's the main street in Somerville, which is so much enveloped by Cambridge that there is NO REASON, at the proximity we were, for this man who navigates streets for a living not to have a clue where Beacon St. was. So I walked on. My shoelaces on one shoe were permanenetly untied at this point, and they and my umbrella made all sorts of unpleasant flapping and slapping noises that I tried not to attribute to frightening attacker people sneaking up behind me.
I finally made it home, called Charlotte and Rachel for some support, and got to bed probably a little before 3. I set my alarm for 7. I got out of bed around 8 and made it in the door here by 9. I came right over to the computer I was working on, and found that it had automatically saved a draft of my paper... that had nothing but gibberish on the very top line, a disgruntled arrangement of the words "Harvard College Libraries." It also had the most recent copy I had saved... about 2 pages short of what I had left with. Two fairly hard-won pages in a paper that is not going at all the way I want it to at this point.
So I went up to the circulation desk and asked the guy working there if there was someone I could speak with who dealt with the computers.
"Uhhhh..." he said with a little chuckle. "Well, there's no one who deals with the computers exactly, but there might be someone who could help..." "
Well," I began, "I was here last night at about 12:30..." And that's as far as I got.
"Oh. That sounds like... I don't think I can help you." He went and got some kind of administrator, telling him there was a "lady" here who needed help. (Am I a lady to college undergrads now? Not that I would necessarily want to be a girl, but it was weird. I've also noticed that in this post I've taken to using 'young man' for men younger than me, meaning they are younger than me but I'm not sure how much. Bizarre quarter-century-ness.) Anyway, the administrator came over--he looked uncannily like Ben from lost--and listened to my tale of woe, expressed doubt that anything would help, but came over to look at the computer. At least he told me that he had told the powers that be to stop the deep freeze during exams, but somehow it had not worked. Which is slightly better than if no one did anything at all and just decided it didn't matter. So Ben looked through my files, and poked through some other files, and came to the conclusion there was nothing to be done, unless I waited til Monday and talked to some computer expert folks at Widener. I said this would not be helpful, and explained fairly calmly that I lived off-campus, that due to this problem I had not gotten to sleep until 3 AM, and that I had to wake up again at 7 in order to get back here, so it really was a major inconvenience. He was not unsympathetic, but seemed more concerned with expressing his own innocence than actually listening to what I had to say, which I find a lamentable human trait. If I am ever in a customer service position again, please remind me that it is more important to hear people than to excuse yourself.
So that's it. Now I'm here, I'm starving, I'm exhausted, and I have to re-write 2 pages of an already plodding, idiotic paper.
Fuck you, Lamont library. If I knew how to dismantle this alarm behind my head, I completely would, and take it as a goddamn trophy to hang up on my wall. If I could dismantle this computer without causing further harm to my paper, I would be sorely tempted. I don't have anything more to say, but I have not exhausted my rage and disappointment. I want my two pages, my breakfast, and my equanimity. Fuck you.
So, at 12:30, the computer abruptly stopped everything it was doing and told me it had gone into a "Deep Freeze" mode and that the keyboard and mouse were inaccessible. I got up to inquire as to why this had occurred, and discovered that all the student computers had, in fact, done this. I then was told that they do this EVERY SATURDAY at 12:30, but usually they are closed so it doesn't matter, and I guess they just didn't both to tell anyone that this was going to happen. If I had known even 5 minutes ahead of time, I could have saved my document and sent it to myself with NO TRAUMATIC EFFECTS whatsoever... but I didn't. A fairly nice young man came over and tinkered futilely with the computer, during which process an appallingly loud FIRE ALARM started going off literally in my ear for a minute and a half. This is apparently the way that Lamont informs its patrons that it is time to leave, and also permanently damages their hearing. My ear is still slightly achy/itchy this morning.
So I left, with no knowledge of how much paper I had lost, and no copy of the paper on anything but this machine. It was, of course, dark and rainy, though thankfully I had an umbrella. I started stomping home, and as I got to the science center, I caught sight of a very drunk young man in something like a slightly oversized suit jacket. And other clothes too, but not a whole suit. He was walking along, swerving all over the path like I've never seen, totally alone. So at first when I saw him I was nervous, not certain of what he was doing or what was going on, but as he got past me I realized, as he stumbled over to the rope that bounds off the grass and then confusedly to a bush, that he was probably totally disoriented and trying to go home. But in this state who knew if he even knew where his home was. I really didn't know what to do. I didn't want to approach him in case he was agitated or scary, and even if I had I wouldn't have known where to take him if he told me he lived in X dorm, but I also didn't want him to keep wandering around and get hypothermia, or stumble into the road, or just fall asleep with alcohol poisoning or something.
So I followed him. It was a bit awkward, since he kept stopping and drifting off in different directions, or just standing there for a long time, but I tailed him all the way back to the other end of the yard. At one point there was a hopeful moment when he seemed to be veering towards the door of what I hoped was a dorm, but it was short-lived, and the next thing I know he was, in fact, stumbling into the road across from the Au Bon Pain, heading on out into Harvard Square. Now I really didn't know what to do. It didn't make sense to follow him all the hell over Cambridge, but it was stupid to leave him now after all that, and when he was potentially in a more dangerous situation.
I was hestitating on my side of the road, when a shadow figure sort of loomed up toward me out of the darkness... and it turned out to be a nice, sweet-looking young man in a big bulky coat who wanted to know when the buses stopped running. For no reason I understand except that I wanted to give him hope or something, I said that I thought they were still running (I actually didn't have the slightest idea) but that I knew the subway had stopped, or stopped around now, or something. When I looked up again I saw that I had lost the drunk boy, and so I decided to go over to the ABP, which apparently is open very late, and ask them if they had seen him, and also if they would call the police. I should interject that my phone had run out of batteries in the early afternoon. As I made it over there, I saw there was a policeman standing in the doorway! I went over to him and explained the situation. He said he had seen the drunk guy and wasn't sure what was going on with him, but, after ascertaining that I didn't know him or where he was supposed to be, he told me that he would check up on him and help him get home, and disappeared purposefully around the corner.
So I continued walking home. At this point my feet and the bottoms of my pants were extraordinarily wet, and I was extraoridinarilly agitated. Being outside in the middle of the night by myself was NOT AT ALL acceptable, and now I had an even longer walk ahead of me than I normally would. At one point I gave up and hailed a cab, only to find that the cab driver didn't know where Beacon St. was. Now, under normal circumstances I could have told him how to get there, most likely, but at this point I was so at the end of my rope that I wasn't sure I could think that clearly, and I also wasn't sure that I wanted to get in a cab with a driver who didn't know where Beacon St. was. It's an enormous street! It's the main street in Somerville, which is so much enveloped by Cambridge that there is NO REASON, at the proximity we were, for this man who navigates streets for a living not to have a clue where Beacon St. was. So I walked on. My shoelaces on one shoe were permanenetly untied at this point, and they and my umbrella made all sorts of unpleasant flapping and slapping noises that I tried not to attribute to frightening attacker people sneaking up behind me.
I finally made it home, called Charlotte and Rachel for some support, and got to bed probably a little before 3. I set my alarm for 7. I got out of bed around 8 and made it in the door here by 9. I came right over to the computer I was working on, and found that it had automatically saved a draft of my paper... that had nothing but gibberish on the very top line, a disgruntled arrangement of the words "Harvard College Libraries." It also had the most recent copy I had saved... about 2 pages short of what I had left with. Two fairly hard-won pages in a paper that is not going at all the way I want it to at this point.
So I went up to the circulation desk and asked the guy working there if there was someone I could speak with who dealt with the computers.
"Uhhhh..." he said with a little chuckle. "Well, there's no one who deals with the computers exactly, but there might be someone who could help..." "
Well," I began, "I was here last night at about 12:30..." And that's as far as I got.
"Oh. That sounds like... I don't think I can help you." He went and got some kind of administrator, telling him there was a "lady" here who needed help. (Am I a lady to college undergrads now? Not that I would necessarily want to be a girl, but it was weird. I've also noticed that in this post I've taken to using 'young man' for men younger than me, meaning they are younger than me but I'm not sure how much. Bizarre quarter-century-ness.) Anyway, the administrator came over--he looked uncannily like Ben from lost--and listened to my tale of woe, expressed doubt that anything would help, but came over to look at the computer. At least he told me that he had told the powers that be to stop the deep freeze during exams, but somehow it had not worked. Which is slightly better than if no one did anything at all and just decided it didn't matter. So Ben looked through my files, and poked through some other files, and came to the conclusion there was nothing to be done, unless I waited til Monday and talked to some computer expert folks at Widener. I said this would not be helpful, and explained fairly calmly that I lived off-campus, that due to this problem I had not gotten to sleep until 3 AM, and that I had to wake up again at 7 in order to get back here, so it really was a major inconvenience. He was not unsympathetic, but seemed more concerned with expressing his own innocence than actually listening to what I had to say, which I find a lamentable human trait. If I am ever in a customer service position again, please remind me that it is more important to hear people than to excuse yourself.
So that's it. Now I'm here, I'm starving, I'm exhausted, and I have to re-write 2 pages of an already plodding, idiotic paper.
Fuck you, Lamont library. If I knew how to dismantle this alarm behind my head, I completely would, and take it as a goddamn trophy to hang up on my wall. If I could dismantle this computer without causing further harm to my paper, I would be sorely tempted. I don't have anything more to say, but I have not exhausted my rage and disappointment. I want my two pages, my breakfast, and my equanimity. Fuck you.
Wednesday, May 16, 2007
Unrelated Observation
I just received an email about a job that is a "4/5" position. It is apparently "80%" of a full time position. What the heck? That seems to be just getting ridiculous. Are you going to take a "1/5" position to go with it? I know there are advantages to not having people work full time exactly... I guess when I was answering phones at the Merriam I had about "70%" of a full time position. But it just sounds silly.
Wow... I don't want to finish this paper, do I?
Wow... I don't want to finish this paper, do I?
Tuesday, May 15, 2007
The World Smells Good Today!
Every time I go outside I have a wonderful olfactory experience! I have also received ice cream, free books (2 "legitimate literature," 2 thrilling-looking adventures, 1 complete smut), and an HDS Exam survival kit. I know that the HDS Alumni/ae think that I am a smartie, not a dum-dum, and they have given me play-doh and bubbles.
I have a lot of writing to do, a frightening amount actually... but I am happy.
I have a lot of writing to do, a frightening amount actually... but I am happy.
Monday, May 14, 2007
The Red Planet
I meant and meant to post something substantial about my trip, and never did... so here's a reflection I read at our reflection lunch. I hope you enjoy the strengths of the genre, and forgive the weaknesses.
Cindy moves around me in the shell of her living room. Neither of us knows what to say. I have followed her inside to get a soda and because the sun has started to mummify my brain and because I have an urge to be with her. I hope that words will descend like little doves into the part of my sweat-slicked hair. They don’t. I scale down my apostolic ambitions and drink my Fresca.
“This soda is great,” I say. “It’s really hot out there.”
“I can’t even be out there five minutes before I’m ready to fall down,” she tells me. She is moving all around me, making a semi-circle of chairs against the backdrop of stripped walls and broken appliances. I feel it in the way her muscles clench and unclench while her eyes search around us—this desire to do something when it feels as though helplessness is nestled permanently against your pulse-point like a spoiled perfume.
We are all battling helplessness. Cindy is battling all the time, arranging chairs in an empty room, finding a scrap of life to maintain. Outside someone strategizes and attacks a fence; another undoes vines; a third engages in quixotic single combat with a large segment of tree snagged in the upper branches of another. The little dog Tiffy, as big as my hand and ridiculous in a red and white cheerleading costume, is a one-creature anti-helplessness army. Later, I battle beside Cindy in her dim, dusty garage. I am familiar with the piled-up remnants of an exploded life, but grimly I do battle. This is a box of electronic things; this is a box of soft things; this of paper. My categories are haphazard and desperate.
There are lots of laminated sheets with popular lyrics and guitar chords, and Cindy insists that they all be saved. The ink has run pink and purple on some, a mini-sunset.
“Do you sing?” I ask.
“I used to,” she said. “Sing and play guitar. I don’t anymore, since the hurricane.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I keep putting the sheets of paper into boxes. I don’t know which side I am fighting for by doing so. What is it about a hurricane that would make a person stop singing?
I find a bizarre little book that Cindy’s son made many years ago. Her son is seventeen now, moved out shortly after Katrina to live with his father. This book is trying to teach the Solar System and grammar at the same time. On one page, the subject of the sentence is underlined, and the subject of the sentence is also Mars. “Mars is the red planet because it is red,” Cindy’s son wrote.
I show Cindy. I want to plant a flag, do a dance. Solar System Grammar Book 1: Helplessness 0.
But let’s be honest. It’s important that if I’m going to talk you about something as pregnant with the possibility of self-righteousness as a service trip, that I be as honest as I can stand. I am not going to win against helplessness, and neither are you. A hurricane can push a house askew like I push a pile of papers. The structure of society can leave people in crumpled heaps like old Barbie dolls, limbs all twisted up, because lives we have labeled worthless prior to crisis will not suddenly, magically be saved when the water rises.
And that very labeling, I’m startled to find, is a weapon wielded by dangerously frightened people… against helplessness. Bear with me. When we go on service trips and clean years, we are fighting helplessness. When we build glittering mansions and mark them off with gates, with a different garden from every window, we are scratching at helplessness. When we stand on Bourbon St. with white crosses and scrolling neon messages about the sins of Babylon, we are crusading against helplessness. When we slip inside the topless bar next door, with a sign that promises to let us wash the girl of our choice, it is helplessness we seek to wrestle to submission.
For myself, I know I must resist the temptation to be virtuous. Pull on a vine of motivation, you will surely find another, and another, tangled in yourself and in others. Fight the helplessness of one storm, and another will come and melt your sand castle. I may not have known this at the time, but I didn’t go to Ocean Springs because it was the right thing to do. I went because it was something to do. Cindy, and Tiffy the dog, and her absent son, and Mars the red planet are not antidotes to helplessness. But they are something. I am having trouble describing what it is that they are, what we are and have been with them—perhaps that trouble is part of my point.
In the garage with Cindy, the Solar System Grammar book goes in the box with tax forms and letters and song lyrics. I find a picture of her son and we stand looking at it together. When we run out of things to say we keep speaking, straining to hear each other. This is within the battle, but this is not the battle. This is two women in a dirty old garage looking at a picture—helpless, still working. It’s reality—a true grace, a force as mysterious as a storm and rarely rose-colored except in beautifully running ink. Mars is called the red planet because it is red. I stand with Cindy. (Amen).
Cindy moves around me in the shell of her living room. Neither of us knows what to say. I have followed her inside to get a soda and because the sun has started to mummify my brain and because I have an urge to be with her. I hope that words will descend like little doves into the part of my sweat-slicked hair. They don’t. I scale down my apostolic ambitions and drink my Fresca.
“This soda is great,” I say. “It’s really hot out there.”
“I can’t even be out there five minutes before I’m ready to fall down,” she tells me. She is moving all around me, making a semi-circle of chairs against the backdrop of stripped walls and broken appliances. I feel it in the way her muscles clench and unclench while her eyes search around us—this desire to do something when it feels as though helplessness is nestled permanently against your pulse-point like a spoiled perfume.
We are all battling helplessness. Cindy is battling all the time, arranging chairs in an empty room, finding a scrap of life to maintain. Outside someone strategizes and attacks a fence; another undoes vines; a third engages in quixotic single combat with a large segment of tree snagged in the upper branches of another. The little dog Tiffy, as big as my hand and ridiculous in a red and white cheerleading costume, is a one-creature anti-helplessness army. Later, I battle beside Cindy in her dim, dusty garage. I am familiar with the piled-up remnants of an exploded life, but grimly I do battle. This is a box of electronic things; this is a box of soft things; this of paper. My categories are haphazard and desperate.
There are lots of laminated sheets with popular lyrics and guitar chords, and Cindy insists that they all be saved. The ink has run pink and purple on some, a mini-sunset.
“Do you sing?” I ask.
“I used to,” she said. “Sing and play guitar. I don’t anymore, since the hurricane.”
I don’t know what to say to that. I keep putting the sheets of paper into boxes. I don’t know which side I am fighting for by doing so. What is it about a hurricane that would make a person stop singing?
I find a bizarre little book that Cindy’s son made many years ago. Her son is seventeen now, moved out shortly after Katrina to live with his father. This book is trying to teach the Solar System and grammar at the same time. On one page, the subject of the sentence is underlined, and the subject of the sentence is also Mars. “Mars is the red planet because it is red,” Cindy’s son wrote.
I show Cindy. I want to plant a flag, do a dance. Solar System Grammar Book 1: Helplessness 0.
But let’s be honest. It’s important that if I’m going to talk you about something as pregnant with the possibility of self-righteousness as a service trip, that I be as honest as I can stand. I am not going to win against helplessness, and neither are you. A hurricane can push a house askew like I push a pile of papers. The structure of society can leave people in crumpled heaps like old Barbie dolls, limbs all twisted up, because lives we have labeled worthless prior to crisis will not suddenly, magically be saved when the water rises.
And that very labeling, I’m startled to find, is a weapon wielded by dangerously frightened people… against helplessness. Bear with me. When we go on service trips and clean years, we are fighting helplessness. When we build glittering mansions and mark them off with gates, with a different garden from every window, we are scratching at helplessness. When we stand on Bourbon St. with white crosses and scrolling neon messages about the sins of Babylon, we are crusading against helplessness. When we slip inside the topless bar next door, with a sign that promises to let us wash the girl of our choice, it is helplessness we seek to wrestle to submission.
For myself, I know I must resist the temptation to be virtuous. Pull on a vine of motivation, you will surely find another, and another, tangled in yourself and in others. Fight the helplessness of one storm, and another will come and melt your sand castle. I may not have known this at the time, but I didn’t go to Ocean Springs because it was the right thing to do. I went because it was something to do. Cindy, and Tiffy the dog, and her absent son, and Mars the red planet are not antidotes to helplessness. But they are something. I am having trouble describing what it is that they are, what we are and have been with them—perhaps that trouble is part of my point.
In the garage with Cindy, the Solar System Grammar book goes in the box with tax forms and letters and song lyrics. I find a picture of her son and we stand looking at it together. When we run out of things to say we keep speaking, straining to hear each other. This is within the battle, but this is not the battle. This is two women in a dirty old garage looking at a picture—helpless, still working. It’s reality—a true grace, a force as mysterious as a storm and rarely rose-colored except in beautifully running ink. Mars is called the red planet because it is red. I stand with Cindy. (Amen).
Saturday, May 12, 2007
Dreamtime in Examtime
First, I dreamed that I was a teenage girl in a big family with lots of aunts. I'm not sure which of these aunts if any was actually my mother. I think my parents might have been dead. But I kept being surprised at how many aunts we had, of all different ages, some with very unusual names. They were all sisters, I think, as opposed to marrying in or something. Anyway, I had this cousin, a boy my age, but he was in Charlotte's body. We might have even been performing, but it seemed much more real than that. So, this boy reminded me of Jesus, and also the narrator from The Life of Pi, he was just... wise, and kind of otherworldly and sparkling and he seemed to know everything. We went to some kind of public event and somebody there was speaking a Native American language, and he just jumped in and started speaking it too.
We were very close and always hung around together, and I was kind of crazy in love with him. And at some point for some reason things were getting more pressing... one of our aunts had died and there was a funeral, and I don't know if I thought he was going to be taken away or maybe actually harmed or what, but I decided I had to tell him how I felt. It was my suspicion that he wasn't actually blood related to us, but I cared more about that because of other people, not because I was personally terribly worried about the idea of incest. This suspicion arose out of the fact that he had been found in a field as an infant, and all of the aunts assumed he was one of theirs. (I'm sure this came from the Ramayana, in which Sita is found in a field.) But I took him aside and I told him how much I loved him, in this startlingly (to me, anyway) poetic way, and he just sort of smiled his beautiful smile, which I think I took as some kind of assent because I startled making plans for our escape together... I remember I kept going farther that I intended to, and was saying things like "when we're 40 or 50," which I was nervous about because I thought it was weird, but it felt completely instinctive because I was so passionate about him, and also so... natural, it felt so natural to be with him.
So, I don't really know what happened with that, because at some point it switched and I was more me, and Uncut Pages was putting on a show in a fitness club in Philly, except the room we were in was extremely nice and had beautiful wooden floors. And it was kind of a benefit/revue of various shows we'd done, although I think most of the stuff we were doing was not from any shows we have actually done. It had a lot of dancing in a line, sort of chorus numbers but with plot. The audience was really into it, and suddenly someone was like, "Where's Dilexi?" And we were startled and a little awkward for some reason even though Lilah and I were both there. I think this may have been because we didn't have the cape. I remember thinking that I had considered bringing the cape but then hadn't because it was too big to pack. But Lilah was wearing a shirt with fancy sleeves, and she stepped up and started playing Dilexi. And we were sort of dancing around her, and then she fell backwards behind some kind of tree or bush that was in the room (as part of the bit, I think), and she started crying like a baby... I don't mean a lot, as that phrase usually does, but I mean in the manner of a baby, with her mouth open enormously wide and stuff. And I was so impressed by what she was doing, both the acting ability and the symbolic choice I decided she was making about Dilexi's rebirth or something.
So I went over and was going to hold her head, like I would for a baby. I don't know why that was the thing to do, but she started freaking out because as Dilexi she didn't want to be touched. Anyway, the audience was really responsive, so after we asked them how many had seen Dilexi and/or were previous fans of our work. And a bunch raised their hands... It was like, 30-40% of this random group of people in the health club. I was impressed and sort of baffled, and thinking maybe we should have worked harder to perform in Philly again, because we apparently had such a fan base there.
And that's about when I woke up!
We were very close and always hung around together, and I was kind of crazy in love with him. And at some point for some reason things were getting more pressing... one of our aunts had died and there was a funeral, and I don't know if I thought he was going to be taken away or maybe actually harmed or what, but I decided I had to tell him how I felt. It was my suspicion that he wasn't actually blood related to us, but I cared more about that because of other people, not because I was personally terribly worried about the idea of incest. This suspicion arose out of the fact that he had been found in a field as an infant, and all of the aunts assumed he was one of theirs. (I'm sure this came from the Ramayana, in which Sita is found in a field.) But I took him aside and I told him how much I loved him, in this startlingly (to me, anyway) poetic way, and he just sort of smiled his beautiful smile, which I think I took as some kind of assent because I startled making plans for our escape together... I remember I kept going farther that I intended to, and was saying things like "when we're 40 or 50," which I was nervous about because I thought it was weird, but it felt completely instinctive because I was so passionate about him, and also so... natural, it felt so natural to be with him.
So, I don't really know what happened with that, because at some point it switched and I was more me, and Uncut Pages was putting on a show in a fitness club in Philly, except the room we were in was extremely nice and had beautiful wooden floors. And it was kind of a benefit/revue of various shows we'd done, although I think most of the stuff we were doing was not from any shows we have actually done. It had a lot of dancing in a line, sort of chorus numbers but with plot. The audience was really into it, and suddenly someone was like, "Where's Dilexi?" And we were startled and a little awkward for some reason even though Lilah and I were both there. I think this may have been because we didn't have the cape. I remember thinking that I had considered bringing the cape but then hadn't because it was too big to pack. But Lilah was wearing a shirt with fancy sleeves, and she stepped up and started playing Dilexi. And we were sort of dancing around her, and then she fell backwards behind some kind of tree or bush that was in the room (as part of the bit, I think), and she started crying like a baby... I don't mean a lot, as that phrase usually does, but I mean in the manner of a baby, with her mouth open enormously wide and stuff. And I was so impressed by what she was doing, both the acting ability and the symbolic choice I decided she was making about Dilexi's rebirth or something.
So I went over and was going to hold her head, like I would for a baby. I don't know why that was the thing to do, but she started freaking out because as Dilexi she didn't want to be touched. Anyway, the audience was really responsive, so after we asked them how many had seen Dilexi and/or were previous fans of our work. And a bunch raised their hands... It was like, 30-40% of this random group of people in the health club. I was impressed and sort of baffled, and thinking maybe we should have worked harder to perform in Philly again, because we apparently had such a fan base there.
And that's about when I woke up!
Wednesday, May 02, 2007
Daemonions
So, I tried to post this before, but it didn't work. Now I've ended up with two daemons. Maybe one of them will post!
I tried, and ended up with Html mishmash in my entry. :( Why did it work for everybody else? Here, I'll put in the links, maybe that will work.
http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/?68800
http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/?17696
I hope so. Also, I think the names of my daemons are hilarious. I'll esteem you ever so slightly more highly if you have a guess as to why.
I tried, and ended up with Html mishmash in my entry. :( Why did it work for everybody else? Here, I'll put in the links, maybe that will work.
http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/?68800
http://www.goldencompassmovie.com/?17696
I hope so. Also, I think the names of my daemons are hilarious. I'll esteem you ever so slightly more highly if you have a guess as to why.
Friday, April 20, 2007
HAPPY BIRTHDAY TO ME!
I am now 25 years old. I feel... happier than I did yesterday when I was 24! Perhaps there is something to this aging thing. :)
And Katie's right, I think this comic is fantastic.
And Katie's right, I think this comic is fantastic.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Cultivation
I'm experiencing that feeling. That feeling of dread and doom and fear, where each new event of the day seems unbearably full of chances to fail.
It goes right down the middle of me, and then runs around to all the tips of my body like static. Pins and needles.
I'm looking for something to redirect my attention and my feelings, but not in the frantic or lethargic way of most procrastination. I've been into lists lately, so here then is a list of the beautiful things in my day thus far:
*Sunlight and brilliant blue sky
*I think my professor for Hinduism and the Epics is more genuinely and passionately in love with what she studies and teaches than anybody I have ever met, ever.
*She also has a beautiful wrap-thing... like a shawl, but with sleeves, very thin and see through and flowy, in a sort of deep pink.
*While I was sitting outside to eat my lunch, my TF came by just as I had gotten some bleu cheese dressing on my mouth and was realizing I had no napkins, and he was like, "Do you need napkins?" because he had grabbed extras.
*Meeting a really exciting person who LOVES William Finn and is coming to my birthday party.
*A hot shower.
*A moment in writing my response when it really clicked in and took off, all at once.
*Having the thought "fuck everyone; I don't have time," and then thinking about the implications of that statement and laughing to myself.
*Saying no.
*These ridiculous little things serving as zipper pulls on my purse, which are eggs and circus people and have two alternate faces all at the same time! Really!
*The knowledge that people (you, at this time) will come by and read my list.
It goes right down the middle of me, and then runs around to all the tips of my body like static. Pins and needles.
I'm looking for something to redirect my attention and my feelings, but not in the frantic or lethargic way of most procrastination. I've been into lists lately, so here then is a list of the beautiful things in my day thus far:
*Sunlight and brilliant blue sky
*I think my professor for Hinduism and the Epics is more genuinely and passionately in love with what she studies and teaches than anybody I have ever met, ever.
*She also has a beautiful wrap-thing... like a shawl, but with sleeves, very thin and see through and flowy, in a sort of deep pink.
*While I was sitting outside to eat my lunch, my TF came by just as I had gotten some bleu cheese dressing on my mouth and was realizing I had no napkins, and he was like, "Do you need napkins?" because he had grabbed extras.
*Meeting a really exciting person who LOVES William Finn and is coming to my birthday party.
*A hot shower.
*A moment in writing my response when it really clicked in and took off, all at once.
*Having the thought "fuck everyone; I don't have time," and then thinking about the implications of that statement and laughing to myself.
*Saying no.
*These ridiculous little things serving as zipper pulls on my purse, which are eggs and circus people and have two alternate faces all at the same time! Really!
*The knowledge that people (you, at this time) will come by and read my list.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
Creating the Survey I Want to Take
Book Word Association Game:
Just what it sounds like. Put down the first book or work of literature that comes to mind with whatever word is given. Feel free, though not obligated, to explain. I have written my answers in cream, so you can reply without influence if you so desire, and then highlight to see what I said.
Green: O Beautiful by Jesse Green
Red: The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
Spring: "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot (poem)
Death: On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony
Wings: Skellig by David Almond
Maze: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Crowbar: ...All I can think of is Clue. Which is not a book. How about "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe (poem)
Hyacinth: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed by Walt Whitman (poem)
Astronomical: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Blessed: Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson
Birth: Still Life by A.S. Byatt
Fate: The Mahabharata, especially the Book of the Assembly Hall and the Battle Books
Mumble: The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
Chimera: Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner (play)
Terror: The Haunting at Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Bear: The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
Bunny: The Bunny Book by Richard Scarry
Lion: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Song: Cattail Moon by Jean Thesman
Robin: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Blue: Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
Pink: The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
Sky: Enchantress from the Stars by Sylvia Louise Engdahl
Underneath: A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voight
Volcanic: Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden
Remnant: Winter of Fire by Sheryl Jordan
Fury: When Rabbit Howls by Truddi Chase
Undulate: Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle
Dodo: The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Nose: Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery
Assent: Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice
Jumping: "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather (story)
Skate: Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
Gold: The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by Marjorie Flack and Dubose Hayward
Monster: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Elephant: The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin
Magic: Half Magic by Edward Eager
Statue: Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pierce
Dervish: House of Stairs by William Sleator
Singularity: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Food: Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery
Adoration: Sonnet 74: "Batter my heart, three personed God" by John Donne
Pleasant: The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney
Pogo stick: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Popcorn: Cinema Nirvana by Dean Sluyter
Umbrella: Down Came the Rain by Brooke Shields
Wow, what a strange and random list! Including at least one book I know I've never read, and a number of others I haven't finished... Anyway, I hope you have fun with this! Sorry about "crowbar."
Just what it sounds like. Put down the first book or work of literature that comes to mind with whatever word is given. Feel free, though not obligated, to explain. I have written my answers in cream, so you can reply without influence if you so desire, and then highlight to see what I said.
Green: O Beautiful by Jesse Green
Red: The First Man in Rome by Colleen McCullough
Spring: "The Wasteland" by T.S. Eliot (poem)
Death: On a Pale Horse by Piers Anthony
Wings: Skellig by David Almond
Maze: If on a Winter's Night a Traveler by Italo Calvino
Crowbar: ...All I can think of is Clue. Which is not a book. How about "The Raven" by Edgar Allen Poe (poem)
Hyacinth: When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloomed by Walt Whitman (poem)
Astronomical: A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
Blessed: Jacob Have I Loved by Katherine Paterson
Birth: Still Life by A.S. Byatt
Fate: The Mahabharata, especially the Book of the Assembly Hall and the Battle Books
Mumble: The Silver Chair by C.S. Lewis
Chimera: Angels in America: Millennium Approaches by Tony Kushner (play)
Terror: The Haunting at Hill House by Shirley Jackson
Bear: The Hotel New Hampshire by John Irving
Bunny: The Bunny Book by Richard Scarry
Lion: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe by C.S. Lewis
Song: Cattail Moon by Jean Thesman
Robin: The Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett
Blue: Gathering Blue by Lois Lowry
Pink: The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
Sky: Enchantress from the Stars by Sylvia Louise Engdahl
Underneath: A Solitary Blue by Cynthia Voight
Volcanic: Tomorrow, When the War Began by John Marsden
Remnant: Winter of Fire by Sheryl Jordan
Fury: When Rabbit Howls by Truddi Chase
Undulate: Many Waters by Madeleine L'Engle
Dodo: The Lost World by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle
Nose: Anne of Avonlea by L.M. Montgomery
Assent: Servant of the Bones by Anne Rice
Jumping: "Paul's Case" by Willa Cather (story)
Skate: Eight Cousins by Louisa May Alcott
Gold: The Country Bunny and the Little Gold Shoes by Marjorie Flack and Dubose Hayward
Monster: Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde by Robert Louis Stevenson
Elephant: The Night Listener by Armistead Maupin
Magic: Half Magic by Edward Eager
Statue: Tom's Midnight Garden by Philippa Pierce
Dervish: House of Stairs by William Sleator
Singularity: The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald
Food: Anne of the Island by L.M. Montgomery
Adoration: Sonnet 74: "Batter my heart, three personed God" by John Donne
Pleasant: The Five Little Peppers and How They Grew by Margaret Sidney
Pogo stick: The Phantom Tollbooth by Norton Juster
Popcorn: Cinema Nirvana by Dean Sluyter
Umbrella: Down Came the Rain by Brooke Shields
Wow, what a strange and random list! Including at least one book I know I've never read, and a number of others I haven't finished... Anyway, I hope you have fun with this! Sorry about "crowbar."
Wednesday, April 04, 2007
Calling in the Night
Since I last dropped in, my Rumiesque guest house self has entertained many garden variety fears and anxieties, nasty cramps, and recursive thought loops, but also a very beautiful moment of understanding.
The latter is due to a sort of coming together of insights offered by Krsna, Charlotte, Roz's mix cd, and Christ crucified.
Holy Week, here I am. In the midst of the teeth-grinding what comes next day to day terror.
I should sleep. Goodnight.
The latter is due to a sort of coming together of insights offered by Krsna, Charlotte, Roz's mix cd, and Christ crucified.
Holy Week, here I am. In the midst of the teeth-grinding what comes next day to day terror.
I should sleep. Goodnight.
Monday, April 02, 2007
Twenty-Four Things I Have Experienced in the Past Twenty-Four Hours
I have...
1. talked theology until 3 AM
2. seen a visual representation of Krsna as ultimate transcendent divinity
3. skinned my knee
4. walked in stocking feet on the wet, cold ground chanting "walk walk walk" to keep myself going
5. had a moment of complete understanding and connection with what my professor was saying
6. heard a description of what it was like to be in Iraq with a rocket zooming overhead from a classmate sitting next to me, directed only to me
7. received an adorable stuffed chick dressed in bunny ears that chirps when you press its middle
8. been invited to two parties
9. eaten soup
10. been walked in on in the bathroom
11. thrown my books on the floor both to get them out of my hands and to hear them bang
12. not attended a rehearsal I was (somewhat surprisingly) looking forward to
13. counted out almost my last non-penny, non-foreign change for a bag of m&ms and a bottle of ginger ale
14. worn a new skirt for the first time
15. given a present
16. fallen asleep while reading the Gospel of John
17. made my bed
18. mentally compared the discourse of a divine being to the way I try to introduce bizarre statements to my friends, and then attempted to explain this out loud
19. forgotten (again) to take my sleeping bag up from the dryer
20. touched a very fuzzy sweater
21. seen Rachel for the first time in over a week
22. photocopied almost 100 pages
23. Learned that Thessalonians come from Thessalonica.
24. Been almost too tired to finish my list.
1. talked theology until 3 AM
2. seen a visual representation of Krsna as ultimate transcendent divinity
3. skinned my knee
4. walked in stocking feet on the wet, cold ground chanting "walk walk walk" to keep myself going
5. had a moment of complete understanding and connection with what my professor was saying
6. heard a description of what it was like to be in Iraq with a rocket zooming overhead from a classmate sitting next to me, directed only to me
7. received an adorable stuffed chick dressed in bunny ears that chirps when you press its middle
8. been invited to two parties
9. eaten soup
10. been walked in on in the bathroom
11. thrown my books on the floor both to get them out of my hands and to hear them bang
12. not attended a rehearsal I was (somewhat surprisingly) looking forward to
13. counted out almost my last non-penny, non-foreign change for a bag of m&ms and a bottle of ginger ale
14. worn a new skirt for the first time
15. given a present
16. fallen asleep while reading the Gospel of John
17. made my bed
18. mentally compared the discourse of a divine being to the way I try to introduce bizarre statements to my friends, and then attempted to explain this out loud
19. forgotten (again) to take my sleeping bag up from the dryer
20. touched a very fuzzy sweater
21. seen Rachel for the first time in over a week
22. photocopied almost 100 pages
23. Learned that Thessalonians come from Thessalonica.
24. Been almost too tired to finish my list.
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
Spam Poetics and Prophecy?
Today, they got me with an email from "Katrina," subject line, "tell me again." Since I'd just been to a meeting about the Gulf Coast trip I'm going on in two weeks to do some relief work connected to Katrina, I opened it.
It was erectile drugs again.
And this, at the bottom:
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moaning fought "My build dear fellow," exclaimed Albert, danger "what can ther
rail "You relax have ample proof ruin to the contrary, wire if you lookbattle "Yes, I concerned understand flower angle that; and how would you habituaIN A tongue merrily admit VERY spit few minutes the count reached No 7 in ttable "Oh, very found easily. match Suppose condemned you knew beforehand the
sat "Whether purring soft I physical am in my senses or not," answered Franz "Yes; behavior but as he vinic fly said you would remain make an excellent s "Oh, grain your vessel back excellency," strike returned Bertuccio in deep
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"Did you lock ever meet him depend built flew previously to coming hither knee Cocls opened finger sign the gate, promise and Baptistin, springing f
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It's kind of beautiful! I love the dialogue. "Whether purring soft I physical am in my senses or not." I think maybe I should start interpreting bizarre Spam emails, or proposing them as some kind of special code.
It was erectile drugs again.
And this, at the bottom:
"But light theory do you thing know this mysterious count mistook is a bachel "And you attempt really scale play sail believe the result would be still "You pig are wrong, proved my wearily sung lord. The love I have for you inight "Certainly; it division being at helpful thrived the same time perfectly un
"I will blot plant exist confess sigh to you, Albert," replied Franz, "t "I raspy outstanding do not deny it," returned the comfort clever count; "but why a "But, your discover army troubled cloth excellency," replied Bertuccio hesitati
moaning fought "My build dear fellow," exclaimed Albert, danger "what can ther
rail "You relax have ample proof ruin to the contrary, wire if you lookbattle "Yes, I concerned understand flower angle that; and how would you habituaIN A tongue merrily admit VERY spit few minutes the count reached No 7 in ttable "Oh, very found easily. match Suppose condemned you knew beforehand the
sat "Whether purring soft I physical am in my senses or not," answered Franz "Yes; behavior but as he vinic fly said you would remain make an excellent s "Oh, grain your vessel back excellency," strike returned Bertuccio in deep
"Listen to mix overflow me, Franz," held said Albert; jolly "I am glad tha "No, no!" exclaimed tail brush Debray; iron "that girl roll is not his"Brucine watch marry after is extracted committee from the false angostura [1]lock tooth It crush is needless to stay add that there were gold and sil"Precisely, size madame," replied muddle Monte worn daughter Cristo; "but I
"Possibly." "Or, as you are smoke a justly Corsican, belief that frightened you had been unab punch "Yes, swim lie my good master," smoggy cried Bertuccio, casting hi
"Did you lock ever meet him depend built flew previously to coming hither knee Cocls opened finger sign the gate, promise and Baptistin, springing f
number fax concentrate "Well, then," said the perfectly baroness, "if slave she be,"Oh, I am aware of that," bread deep solid insect said Madame de Villefortpreach pray mind At the sound of their near steps a young woman of twentclever swing "Well," silver replied Monte Cristo example "suppose, then, that
"I have." star "I strap understand that, but repulsive I do not stamp understand what i "But, mine monsieur, it is very license grass abecedarian natural," returned Bert
arch bore "Of change sneeze the Arabian Nights?"rapidly bit "Do you know regret made any other counter-poisons?"complete "Ah, lick monsieur," run returned program Julie, "it is treason in"I do not."
"And where?""What! my house?" blindly "Oh, your excellency, it glass was friendly mark not yours, then."
swim business "Will you promise me not sail to repeat a leave single word o
born "If you like; agree upheld but tell me, my swear dear Lucien, what itrhythm "I have often read, and punishment leg read sowed again, the history of"I am fragile sorry to at reaction important see," observed Monte Cristo to Morrenthusiastic "No, madame, contrary watch to most veracious history, bow it is true; "I promise." room shrill "Whose, then? The Marquis de produce morning Saint-Mran, I think, "Oh, it naughty was bumpy not on him, theory monsieur; it limit was on anothe
"Upon your honor?""True, geriatric sir. The two leaped favorite studies floor tasty of my youth w
It's kind of beautiful! I love the dialogue. "Whether purring soft I physical am in my senses or not." I think maybe I should start interpreting bizarre Spam emails, or proposing them as some kind of special code.
Monday, March 12, 2007
Some Books + How to Seduce Me With Spam
Today I got an email from "Prodigal G. Wrongheadedness." And I'm looking at it thinking, "Right, that's gonna get me to open the email." But of course... it did. I wasn't expecting much, but sometimes I just can't resist the charmingly ridiculous names. It was an advertisement for some sort of erectile drug. Which... not to say that there's no place for that kind of drug, but I do not think that the place it currently occupies is ideal, to put it mildly. Or, at any rate, it highlights the gross inequities of the pharmaceutical system. So, perhaps Prodigal G. Wrongheadedness is not the wrong name...
Jesus H. Christ, but I can't see anything without analyzing it anymore, can I?
I intended to come on in here and let you all know what fine things I've been reading lately:
*Paradiso by Dante Alighieri
**Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
**In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind by Bernard J. Baars
The Country Parson by George Herbert
*The Temple by George Herbert
*The Book of Revelations
The First Letter to the Thessalonians
The Second Letter to the Thessalonians
*The Second Letter of Peter
**The Gospel of Mark (as implied in the previous post about it)
I think there might be a couple more, but I'll fill those in as I remember them.
Jesus H. Christ, but I can't see anything without analyzing it anymore, can I?
I intended to come on in here and let you all know what fine things I've been reading lately:
*Paradiso by Dante Alighieri
**Gilead by Marilynne Robinson
**In the Theater of Consciousness: The Workspace of the Mind by Bernard J. Baars
The Country Parson by George Herbert
*The Temple by George Herbert
*The Book of Revelations
The First Letter to the Thessalonians
The Second Letter to the Thessalonians
*The Second Letter of Peter
**The Gospel of Mark (as implied in the previous post about it)
I think there might be a couple more, but I'll fill those in as I remember them.
Not Quite Paradise
Before going to bed last night (which was weird enough anyway, since I had a sudden mild illness that has now disappeared, happily), I read a few pages of Toni Morrison's Paradise, which I have to read and write a response paper on for class next week. I find that reading novels before bed is way more successful than reading books about say, brain chemistry, or legal definitions of race.
I have read Paradise before, but, probably because we were going through all of Morrison's novels at breakneck speed, I remember almost nothing about it. The first few pages, in which women at a convent (but not nuns, I don't think) were being pursued and shot by men, reminded me a little. And then I fell asleep.
After a brief dream in which I went back to my old high school for a class with all my old classmates, I segued into a dream that was explicitly about the book. That is, in my dream, I was re-reading the book as I had been in real life, but my re-reading took the form of explicitly experiencing the things in the book, with a sort of fuzzy consciousness reminding me that I knew what would happen and that it will be all right.
In my dream, I was simultaneously a little girl and a grown woman caring for the little girl, and most of the time we were black. I remember looking at my skin with some fascination. But I think other times we might have briefly been white, almost like my brain forgot to make the switch. Anyway, there was this man coming after us, also mostly black, and he had seen a flyer that offered a reward if you killed women and children that were unaccompanied by men. He was someone we knew, but the woman knew he was going to try to kill them, and the little girl didn't. So the woman had to quiet the little girl and get her to hide. In my memory of the book, I had an image of the man sort of beating the top of a tree with a baseball bat while the woman and the girl hid below. This translated into us hiding in a sort of wooden structure below the floor of the the house we were in, and hearing the man crashing around with his bat. I think he was drunk, too. It was terrifying.
Then my perspective switched and I was outside, looking at the house and the man, although part of my consciousness was still with the girl and the woman. And I saw in an upper window that there was a doll house, and that the woman had convinced the girl to reach up through the floor of the doll house and manipulate the dolls inside, so the man would think we were playing there and come attack it. And I was shocked by this plan, even though I knew it had to work. The man saw the dolls moving and started to head for that part of the house. I knew he was going to smash up the doll house, but I didn't know how we were going to escape after that. I had images of us crawling out the bottom of the house somehow while he was occupied on top, but it was just such a terrifying idea, that we would have to lie there while he broke everything around us, that I guess I couldn't stay in it anymore, because I woke up.
Bizarre and scary, and I will be somewhat curious to see what it has to do with Paradise in reality. Hopefully not too much, but the novel already seems chilling and bleak.
I have read Paradise before, but, probably because we were going through all of Morrison's novels at breakneck speed, I remember almost nothing about it. The first few pages, in which women at a convent (but not nuns, I don't think) were being pursued and shot by men, reminded me a little. And then I fell asleep.
After a brief dream in which I went back to my old high school for a class with all my old classmates, I segued into a dream that was explicitly about the book. That is, in my dream, I was re-reading the book as I had been in real life, but my re-reading took the form of explicitly experiencing the things in the book, with a sort of fuzzy consciousness reminding me that I knew what would happen and that it will be all right.
In my dream, I was simultaneously a little girl and a grown woman caring for the little girl, and most of the time we were black. I remember looking at my skin with some fascination. But I think other times we might have briefly been white, almost like my brain forgot to make the switch. Anyway, there was this man coming after us, also mostly black, and he had seen a flyer that offered a reward if you killed women and children that were unaccompanied by men. He was someone we knew, but the woman knew he was going to try to kill them, and the little girl didn't. So the woman had to quiet the little girl and get her to hide. In my memory of the book, I had an image of the man sort of beating the top of a tree with a baseball bat while the woman and the girl hid below. This translated into us hiding in a sort of wooden structure below the floor of the the house we were in, and hearing the man crashing around with his bat. I think he was drunk, too. It was terrifying.
Then my perspective switched and I was outside, looking at the house and the man, although part of my consciousness was still with the girl and the woman. And I saw in an upper window that there was a doll house, and that the woman had convinced the girl to reach up through the floor of the doll house and manipulate the dolls inside, so the man would think we were playing there and come attack it. And I was shocked by this plan, even though I knew it had to work. The man saw the dolls moving and started to head for that part of the house. I knew he was going to smash up the doll house, but I didn't know how we were going to escape after that. I had images of us crawling out the bottom of the house somehow while he was occupied on top, but it was just such a terrifying idea, that we would have to lie there while he broke everything around us, that I guess I couldn't stay in it anymore, because I woke up.
Bizarre and scary, and I will be somewhat curious to see what it has to do with Paradise in reality. Hopefully not too much, but the novel already seems chilling and bleak.
Friday, March 09, 2007
Editor's Note
I got excited about posting links to other people's blogs on my blog, since it seems to be all the rage these days, and also will mean I can navigate conveniently from my own blog, instead of going all the way to Rachel's. ;) BUT... maybe your blog is on my list and you don't want all my random visitors wandering over to your private meanderings. Or, maybe you really are looking to dramatically increase the traffic to your blog, but somehow I have neglected to include you.
If you want to either be taken off the list or added to it, please leave me a comment, and I will comply with your desires. Unless they are unreasonable or unrelated to this matter, in which case I make no promises.
If you want to either be taken off the list or added to it, please leave me a comment, and I will comply with your desires. Unless they are unreasonable or unrelated to this matter, in which case I make no promises.
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