Hedviga Golik

I read this story today and it bothers me...

www.cnn.com/2008/WORLD/europe/05/16/croatia.body.ap/index.html?iref=mpstoryview

Basically, Hedviga Golik died 30 years ago in her apartment, and they just found her now when neighbors decided to break in.

I just found this story as well, which is creepier but a little more comprehensible. 

www.javno.com/en/croatia/clanak.php?id=147979

I just wanted to put her name out there, and encourage other people to say it and maybe light a candle for her.  30 (or 40 or 50, depending on who you talk to) years is too long to be unseen.

The Divinity Student and the Science Library: a Story of Mutual Bewilderment

So, just now I went to put a book on the book truck, and I saw another book that was already on the book truck.

This book, I thought, was called God. Huh, interesting, I thought, I like books called God. I went for a closer look.

Alas, it is not called God. It is called Cod. It is about the fish. According to the subtitle, Cod changed the world.

Well, so did God.

:) Happy finals!

From Me, With Love

Hi all,

So, my throat is sore and my head is spacey, and ironically this is making it difficult for me to focus on the book I have with me, called The Body in Pain, by Elaine Scarry. Instead, I think I will make a nice survey for you to take, if you feel so inclined. And I will answer my own questions now, so as to be fair and not pave a road with good intentions like the last time.

1. Close your eyes. Turn your head slightly to the right. Open them. What do you see? A white table, chairs with gray cushions, a sign detailing what is prohibited in Cabot Science Library.

2. Are you reading a good book now? What is it? I am almost done with Midnight's Children by Salman Rushdie, but can't quite bring myself to finish it. I think this is because it is the last novel I have to read for class, and beyond that it's all scholarly stuff. Not that I'm not reading the scholarly stuff now, but somehow this is psychologically relevant.

3. It's 2008. Do you believe this? Not really. I mean, I get the date right when I write it down or something, but I think sometimes I still believe it is 2004, when I graduated Bryn Mawr. I don't know why, but when I pick up a book or something that was written in 2004, I'm always like, wow, that's really new... wait... it's not.

4. Do you want to do a paper about Christian tattoos as icons? No.

5. Is it abnormally warm today where you live? Yes!

6. Have you ever been in a serious physical fight? Tell me about it. Why did it happen? What did it feel like? If you've been in many, pick one. I have not been in a serious physical fight. I have been in play-fights, and they feel like there's this energy I always carry that is suddenly focused, absorbed, and released.

7. Can you see out a window right now? If so, describe the first person you see out the window. If there's no person, or no window, tell me who is not there. I see a woman in a denim jacket with red-brown hair, walking on the rock fountain with a child who is out of view. I was going to make up a story about her, but it seems suddenly disrespectful.

8. What is right in front of you that you love? Right now I feel warmly toward this man sitting in a chair with his hands interlaced on top of his bald spot. He is wearing a tan jacket, a button down shirt of an indescribable browny-gray color, and a watch.

9. What is right in front of you that you find perplexing? I am perplexed by two small squares of velcro affixed to the circulation desk.

10. Are you tired? Yes.

11. When is the last time you made a conscious decision to lie? Why did you do so? It was a couple of weeks ago. I did it to preserve a man's good opinion of me across difficulties of language, culture, religion, sexual mores, etc. I did it to make my life easier. I don't know if it has or not.

12. What worries you right now? I am worried because I feel like I have a cold or something, and I need to be healthy when I go to Baltimore. I am worried about my school work. I am worried about the future.

13. What pleases you right now? I am pleased to be wearing shoes, not boots. I am pleased by the feel of the rim of the little garbage can against the arches of my feet. I am pleased that my shift is over in 45 minutes. I am pleased by seeing Charlotte every day, and I am pleased to be home with Rachel and Amy. In a general sense, not right at this moment, clearly.

14. What can you hear right now? Security guards discussing politics. It's interesting.

15. What (approximately) was happening in your life 5 years ago? I was 20 years old... I was still in Europe, I think, travelling with Rachel and Katie. Now I want to look up and see exactly where we were, or if we were coming back yet. I'm going to guess that it was a later part of the trip, perhaps Berlin or Paris or Dublin. Was it in Ireland that Katie told us about this blackcurrent ale or cider or something? And we got some in a pub? I remember the way the streets looked in Dublin, somehow, more than anything else. And I remember that statue of Oscar Wilde. That was in Dublin, right?

16. Has anything fundamentally changed about your emotional life since then? That's a hard question. But I have no one to blame for it but myself. I think I'm on a little more of an even keel than I was then, but fundamentally... I'm not sure that anything is fundamentally changed. Or, I think the way I understand my emotions is a bit different, but the sensations themselves are not, really. Oh... I have noticed that I am much more easily moved by things than I used to be. I find myself tearing up over lots of things, on TV or whatever, that never would have produced such a reaction before. I don't know why that is, but I think it has something to do with getting older, having a range of experiences that stretch out to contact more than they could before, and... something I can't describe, something about a broader awareness of just how vulnerable we are, of just how bad things can be. (That doesn't explain what I want to explain at all, and sounds weird. But still.)

17. Do you have any secret that you have never told anyone, at all, ever, even anonymously? I honestly didn't think so as I was writing that, but now I am thinking of things that I don't think I ever told anyone. However, I don't have anything that is a constant presence with me, that I have never told anyone, at all, ever, even anonymously.

18. Have you ever hugged a book? Yep.

19. Thrown one across the room? Yep.

20. Hit one? Yes.

21. Kissed one? I think so.

22. Destroyed one on purpose? No.

23. Yelled at one? Yes.

24. Refused to continue reading at one point due to a moral objection to certain events, but then just had to get back to it? Would I make up such a question if the answer was no? It was The Witching Hour by Anne Rice.

25. Have you done all those things to other people? I have not thrown a person across the room, nor destroyed one on purpose. And... this is interesting... I don't think I have ever explicitly refused to associate with someone because of moral objections. I think the only people I have had deep, sincere, lasting moral objections to with regard to their behavior have not been my friends. What does this mean?

26. What is the strangest thing you have ever hugged? Probably a dumbwaiter. It was a big one.

27. Kissed? A locker.

28. The very first time you were enamoured of someone, what did you do in immediate reaction? I ran weird circles around my room, sort of jumping over my bed, listening to an a capella tape of "For the Longest Time" and singing.

29. Name something unusual that had some influence in your sexual development. Lucius Cornelius Sulla.

30. And something cliched? Spin the Bottle. But I wasn't playing, really.

31. How about a minor guilty secret? Doesn't have to be about sex, just something not-huge that bugged you. Hmm... I never bought Annie on my Mind, in high school, even though I wanted to read it, because I didn't want the cashier to think I was a lesbian. And I thought that was dumb, especially since I was often buying books with gay men in them. But I still didn't buy it.

32. What about a small act of heroism? There was this man lying in the alleyway beside Merriam Theater, and everybody was sort of uncomfortably hoping he was ok and not dead and not in serious trouble, and I finally just went out myself and woke him up and made sure he was alright. That's pretty small, but it felt like kind of a big deal when everybody was older than me and technically more experienced in life.


That's all folks, time to leave work!  Take my survey for a rip-roaring good time!

Merry Christmas! (Or, I saw this movie you should see)

I forgot to say before, please see Charlie Wilson's War.  I don't want to say much about it until people have seen it, but I want you to see it so I can talk to you about it.

If that's not reason enough... Philip Seymour Hoffman is fantastic and deserves your admiration and love, and is acting in this movie.

But seriously.  See it.  Then talk to me.

Merry Christmas some more!

Merry Christmas! (Or, random thoughts about my dad)

Here I am, with my beautiful new laptop, having beautiful internet in my very own room at home, and sadly my phone has to be plugged in around the corner and so at the moment is more awkward to reach than my computer... but no one is online to talk to me!  

Well, that's not true... the automated moviefone thing is online, as is a person I only knew on the internet except for meeting once randomly in person, but with whom I have not spoken in any context for some time.  And some people have away messages up.

But that's ok, because I have a delightful public-private inner-thoughts-to-outer-world forum to keep me company until my phone gets more charg-y.  Or until I just get sleepy, and forget all the things I wanted to say, which seems to be happening right now.

It's been an interesting time so far.  I spent some time with my dad Saturday and Sunday, and that was good.  It's amazing how I can feel so connected to him in some ways, like when we talk about the big stuff of life and the spirit, which sounds, as such things often do, ridiculous to write down, except that I really mean it... and I feel like we're really sharing something important, and special, and we are... and then I try to tell him what I think about a movie, or what I'm doing next year, and it seems like we're communicating but suddenly he says something that has all the ingredients of what I've been saying, but isn't actually my point at all... and then I look at the picture we took together using Photo Booth, and our smiles do the same thing to our faces, our noses are the same, the stretch of our mouths... or I see him almost-sleeping on the couch and he moves his thumbs against each other restlessly like I know I do, or his feet, absurdly high arch tucked and rubbed against the top of the other foot, and that is just like me.  And somehow all these things, connections, disconnections, awkwardness, alikeness-- come from the same person, in not even 48 hours.  And he tells me he wants to know more about what I like and I am quiet, not knowing what to say.  (We are talking about music, should I give a list?)  And sometimes I think he creates an idea of me quite fully out of pieces of true things, and sometimes I think he knows me in ways I cannot know myself.  

This is ironic, since part of our discussion, a real heart of it, was how you cannot see yourself, how if you look for the self you cannot find it, that self-hood itself (ha) and everything around it is created... but if there is no self, created by whom?  This is one of those statements that should maybe come with warnings, like the Cloud of Unknowing: Don't read me or think about me unless you're way gung-ho about the whole spiritual path deal.  Or maybe I'm just posturing.  (Who is?  Ha.)

He can irritate me intensely, and I am terribly afraid of displeasing him in some small way.  He bought me beautiful shirts-- in size extra-large.  I take a stupid pleasure in being more educated than he is, in thinking silently that I understand more while he speaks.  Especially about eastern religions.

I can see now how crippled he has been, because he is not so big and full of power as he used to be.  When he hugs me, he is still the strongest person in the world, the whole world still goes away.  I think he is trying to protect me from his family, or protect himself through me.  I think he has systematically removed me from their reach... he may be fully conscious of this, or totally unconscious, or I may be incredibly wrong.

I love him.  I can't decide if that statement encompasses all of this I have said before, or not.

So, there's actually a lot more I have to say, about things other than my dad, like... my mom!  ;)  Well, and how Christmas Eve went and how it was singing at Mass and how my extended family is responding to my telling them about Charlotte with a wonderful outpouring of love and support so far... and how I got some cool presents at Jeff's family's party, and... well, but this will all have to wait.

In the meantime, the merriest of Christmases to you all!  I love you!  (Or I don't know you, but you can have some love too, if you want!)

Notes to (or on) the World

It's snowing. It's been a real winter so far. Several real snowstorms and lots of trudging through ice and snowbanks and having big snow crystals in my hair and finding my feet sliding out from under me. I think I'm happy about it. Or, it's a pain, and it's cold, and it's difficult to get around, but somehow I feel some kind of strange joy when I am out in it nonetheless. I did this morning, anyway.

And last night, I was cutting home through the woods and I suddenly noticed how beautiful it was, and how quiet. I looked over and I saw this small tree, thin and curvy and bent, standing by itself. I felt like this was Christmas, or Advent, this was something I'd been waiting for. So I stood there looking for awhile, debating whether I wanted to get my feet wet to go over to it, and then I got off the path and trudged through the snow, and when I made it to the tree I fit perfectly against the curve of it, with my arm around the side and my cheek against the cold, wet bark.

I hope this will do as a resumption of posting. If I have any faithful readers left. ;)

A more petty note is that people should not write in library books. Ever. Especially not if it's a complicated novel like Midnight's Children which I am trying to read and pay attention to, but somebody has underlined half of every page and written crap like "style" and "shows failure of omniscient narrator" all over the margins. Just read! Don't write! Or, if you must, get your own book or write notes on a notebook or something.

Hello

This is just a note to let you all know that there are no disasters on my end. :) I will write something longer soon, really.

Not a Happy Camper

I did not have a good day.

I'm feeling quite unsettled.

Understandably, I then had a dream about people being beaten to death in a movie.

Understandably, but not pleasantly.

Perhaps I should write something coherent about this that has paragraphs of more than one sentence.

Perhaps.

Sorry, this entry is kind of scary.

I am not sick, heartbroken, crazy, or failing out of school.

Happily, since school has not begun.

I will post something more informative soon.

Find the Treasure

Kind of like a treasure hunt!!
What is on the wall closest to you?:	A Peanuts character, a no smoking sign, and a notice about overdue fines.
When you turn to the right, what is the first thing you see?:	A black chair with five wheels and the security guard, who is now switching places with another security guard.
Name each thing you hear right now:	The new security guard talking to another man in a non-English language, my typing, a girl's flip-flops as she walks across the library, pleather furniture squishing
Name each thing you smell right now:	My nose is runny. The library has a smell, but I don't know how to describe it.
What is the title of the book nearest to you right now?:	History and Description of the Steam-Ship Great Britain Built at Bristol for the Great Western Steam-Ship Company; To Which are Added, Remarks on the Comparative Merits of
go to page 86.. go to line 12.. share the first 8 words:	(Title continued) Iron and Wood as Materials for Ship-Building. Ironically, there is no page 86. On page 8: "A A A A represents the outline of the boilers"
go to your nearest window, then list 3 things you saw when you looked out:	A big, bright orange handbag. A woman with a green shirt either arguing with or bidding enthusastic farewell to a young man, a tow-headed child in a baseball cap.
How many steps take you to your bathroom?:	The 75th step puts me over the threshold.
Describe your main light source at this moment:	Flourescent lights in long rectangular bars, with checkered plastic grating.
list each thing on your work space right now:	Book due and cancelled stamps, a scanner with stand, a demagnitizer, computer parenphenalia, Cabot bookmarks, book plates with empty space for due dates, oversized rubber
How many spoons in your kitchen drawer right now?:	bands (continuing from the last question because I have no idea about this one), yellow tape with "reserve" written on it, and generally more thing than I can fit in this spac
Describe everything on your body right now in the from of clothes or jewels:	Black flip-flops with jeweled straps, pink underwear, a skirt with a waterside town on it, a white bra, a yellow T-shirt, my Bryn Mawr ring, my snake ring
How many plants are in your house:	None?
Are they fake or real?:	Fake?
Where did you buy your computer?:	I don't recall, and I don't think it works anymore.
If you have a purse, describe it.:	A yellow Strand bag with green pockets sewn in and Spanish writing on it.
If you just carry a wallet, describe it:	Don't, at present.
grab a piece of paper in either one, and tell us what it is:	The Spare Change News
what was the last reciept you had in your hands for?:	Probably a bank receipt for the withdrawal I made.
What is the last thing you wrote on?:	Um... an old card from the card catalogue.
If you carry a purse, name 3 things in it right now:	A broken pen, a flyer from a place where I did not get my haircut, a small lock
what is sitting on the floor closest to you?:	A blue plastic garbage can that I am bending with my feet.
Name something you can see right now that you should throw away:	Probably the stupid labels I made for the CD Roms while Anne, one of the librarians, also made labels. Since now they are useless.
name something you can see right now that you couldnt bear to throw away:	See previous answer, since I spent so much time on them, though I'm sure I'll overcome this eventually.
when you say goodbye to a pal, what do you say?:	I like to make goodbyes wordless and inscrutable. Keep them guessing.
Take this survey | Find more surveys Bzoink - The Original Survey Site

Dear Alan Rickman

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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?

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.

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).

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!

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.