Archive for February, 2008

this is life, and everything’s alright

February 26, 2008 at 9:57 pm · Filed under General Reflection ·Tagged , , ,

Oh, why didn’t they tell me at birth, all prune-skin and piercing scream (I was the loudest in the maternity ward they said, a little foreshadowing for you,) that life would be difficult.

Some of my earliest memories are silly games, movies about dinosaurs and sing alongs, finger food, play doh, swing sets, infinite back yards, recess, all of these innocent moments that I miss so much. The clink of summer rec baseball bats hitting tee-balls. The smell of wet grass, the feel of mud in the creek, collecting tadpoles from fields of puddles after a long rain.

Some Sunday afternoons we would go to Fisher’s Bakery in Ellicott City and have donuts. Sometimes we’d just take a long drive to get me to sleep and stop screaming. Sometimes we’d go feed the ducks, though they had been spoiled early on by people who brought cake and pastries; no ducks wanted our wonder bread.

The first time I had Wonder Bread actually was at my own seventh birthday party; it was Victorian themed so I don’t actually know why Wonder Bread was involved. We all made little boxes with Victorian clip art, line drawings of cupid-lipped women with pin-curls and laced bodices. We had tea with sugar-cubes (another first, I stole more than were humanly necessary) and small sandwiches (perhaps this is where Wonder Bread came into play?)

I asked for it repeatedly after that, now bored of the usual wheat-bread and potato-bread fare. We never got it again though after that party, my dad preferred the family to stay away from white foods, and not in a crazy OCD way but more in a “my generation was the white-food generation.”

I don’t know where these tangents are going. Personally I’ve felt overwhelmed lately, school and travel and internship hunt and doctors and doctors and doctors. Driving takes a toll; my room is still mostly unpacked because I’m never there. The building smelled like a skunk in a chemical fire this morning, I’ve heard stories of students getting sick because of it.

I really miss home now, I’ve been looking at some Baltimore-based internships with the vague notion of scraping together a last summer with the bffs (best friends forever, lest you not speak Hollins-speak) before we all part ways for our wide variety of lives ahead of us. It’s almost devastating to think of the prospect of living through postcards and emails, those newsletter like family updates. That’s what we’re all doing, forming families and units of our own, and moving outward like starbursts from this little section of Baltimore.

I’ll be moving to the (people’s republic of) Chapel Hill after Hollins, this much has been decided. Who knows where everyone else will go.

I have a love-hate relationship with my computer class, taken out of desperation to get out of an econ class that I would undoubtedly fail. The semester is already overwhelming the first few weeks in; I can say with confidence my favorite things about school now lie mostly in the Writing Center. I feel my best when I’m tutoring, engaging students in conversation about stylistic choices, about “have you thought about this,” and “what if you put this here,” and all the tips, tricks, and mnemonics in between.

So I now am seriously considering teaching as a profession, though not on the collegiate path. I’ve thought maybe elementary level, but then again that’s so much foundation building and bureaucracy; from my few ventures back to high-school I’ve found connecting with the students is not as hard as I’d think.

In fact, I received an email yesterday saying that a certain advanced-creative-writing student had commented on my visits, listing me as who he thought to be the most talented of the alumni poets to come and read. The comment, an aside added to the end of an email, made such a phenomenally awful day so much better.

/end ego, insert abrupt ending.

Leave a Comment

city living (from saturday)

February 24, 2008 at 12:00 pm · Filed under General Reflection ·Tagged , , ,

It’s always nice to go back to Baltimore for the weekend, to have the niceties of home like free laundry and delicious food. My bed here is 2x the bed at school, and 10x as soft. But it’s also nice to know I have a car and a five hour drive to get me back to some semblance of independence, not being hawked for what I do.

The difficult thing is this: parents always want to shield you from mistakes. They look at your life with this sort of ‘I-can-see-the-future” power granted only to those who have had children, and tell you that the biggest dream you’re working towards is not going to work out so “why don’t you just wait.”

I don’t know whether to be mad or not, I vaguely knew that my parents would react this way: feign some sort of surprise and excitement and then in the wake of the novelty of it, try to talk me out of it. It’s unfortunate, because it’s something they should be happy about; and it’s almost worse to see them play the happy role before reverting back to, “what’s the rush?”

And I completely understand the question what’s the rush, it’s the most cliche question when your son or daughter presents the idea. But to not understand when they in turn reply, “There is no rush, but this is when I am going to do it,” I don’t understand.

Well, that’s enough soap opera drama for one entry. I meant to do a photographic representation of my day, but it was cold and rainy and gross and I don’t want to take pictures of grey skies.

So instead I leave you with this, found from the weekly feed of Postsecret

That sort of killed me emotionally; it’s deserving of a poem but I have to go get some bagels before I decide when to leave Baltimore.

Leave a Comment

saving words for making sense

February 22, 2008 at 10:38 pm · Filed under General Reflection, Photography

buik for sale

Again I played with the camera on my drive home yesterday; a five hour drive with snow storms and impatient eighteen-wheelers tailing me. Snow snow snow, so of course there was no school in Baltimore today which meant conspicuous amounts of Wii and sleep. We played a rousing game of scrabble (mom, brother, and I) where I came in second with a formidable score in the early 200’s. I spent the rest of the day moving from soft surface to soft surface, reading livejournals and contemplating writing of constructive merit. The latter somehow got eternally pushed down the priority scale until I wound up here at 10:45 wondering whether I should maybe get up to speed on this documenting thing. I have this whole idea for a ‘day in my life’ picture post tomorrow, granted this will only work if the weather agrees with me. Today everything was frozen under thick layers of ice.

Did you know The Format broke up? If you didn’t know the band, I suggest you find yourself a copy of their album Dog Problems, if not only to listen to the song Oceans, a perfect example of flawless pop. Other bands I would suggest at the moment for lack of anything better to do would be: Six Parts Seven (the subject line of this post is a song of theirs I love), and Alaska in Winter (think Beirut, only with a little less old-world theatrics). Those are two I’ve been listening to on and off recently; I recommend highly the song “Afternoon Bed” of the former band. That’s the kind of music that makes me want to write poetry.

I feel like I’m short-shrift-ing the journal today if I don’t bring the word count up a little bit more, but to be honest the day was just this stark and boring. Yesterday was tiring, classes and then a five hour drive. Today, sleep and lazing. Tomorrow? More of the same.

I love being in Baltimore.

Leave a Comment

i love it when you read to me and you, you can read me anything

February 20, 2008 at 11:44 pm · Filed under General Reflection ·Tagged , , , ,

 

I checked youtube for the original of this song, fully intending to post some arbitrary video with the song playing behind it to talk about the inherent beauty in Stephen Merritt’s low notes. For one of the first times in a while on youtube I found an amateur cover that I almost like better than the original recording. The Magnetic Fields do it a little more like they are in slow motion in the middle of an empty ballroom.

The simplicity of the song is what strikes me about it I think, and how even in plain words there can be a line that strikes like:

“the book of love is long and boring/ and written very long ago/ it’s full of flowers and heart shaped boxes/ and things we’re all too young to know”

It’s so true, Stephen Merritt, it’s so true.

The song itself struck me today more than most in that today has been a day I’ve let my mind wander to an idyllic future, one that doesn’t involve papers and instead involves friends and family, music and laughter. I’ve begun to think immensely about my future life, questioning the up-till-now firm career plans I’ve made (such as my devotion to not becoming a teacher.)

I moved across campus this past weekend which is something I’d like never to repeat; sweat and sailor’s curses down narrow hallways at three in the morning (put a procrastinator and her procrastinating boyfriend together and you get a moving job that’s started on the last day at midnight.) But the view is lovely, front quad gridded in my window; and to be honest, it’s alot nicer to have a giant room again rather than the shoebox I had in Tinker.

I’ve written a little poetry lately, not much, and certainly not as much as I’ve devoted to a gargantuan screenplay project of epic (but not ‘an epic’) proportions. It’s enough to make me feel confident that I will indeed become a prolific poet again. I’m reading to high-schoolers on Friday at my old high school; this is a tradition I love to keep. I get to play the cool kid in a place where I never inhabited the role before, I get to answer questions as if my life up until this point is a novel that can be broken into chapters, as if my experiences are “examples” of how college life is. The question inevitably comes up, “Your school is all girls?! Don’t they fight all the time?” The answer I’ve always given has been something along the lines of, “Ha ha noooo.” (note: I still do not, and doubt I will ever, find offense in the term all-girls vs. all-women.) Now, who knows what I’ll say; perhaps I’ll flatten my smile and say something like “People who want to fight will fight, and that’s life.”

I wanted to write, “It’s too bad that this time all of the poignant vignettes about best-friends-forever and ‘crazy times downtown with friends’ will have to be nixed,” but then I realized, to be honest, last time I visited the high school I couldn’t really come up with one I wanted to tell. Foreshadowing, perhaps.

I’ll be going home to Baltimore this weekend, the first weekend in– really? can it be? the first weekend in MONTHS that I haven’t spent with my boyfriend. The three hours is a plight in our relationship, but somehow we’ve made it to see each other for long spans of time these past months. The budgets have caught up with us now, and like every tragic love story, we had to put a “To Be Announced” on the next visit’s date.

I am excited for the visit home, the inevitable video game battles and “come listen to this, come listen to this;” the three am jam sessions, the jokes at everyone’s expense. I am not looking forward to (but in a sense, I suppose I am) the adult chat, the budgeting session, the revealing of super-secret-super-future plans, those of which I can’t disclose but can only say that I am looking forward to 2009. It will be a successful unwinding of stress, the first time I’ve seen my parents since twice moving rooms and visiting the hospital. And then I will have nothing to look forward to until spring break, until july, until oh-nine.

So, I like the way Kafka keeps his journals; they’re the best I’ve read so far.

“There is a certain hothouse delicacy in the way in which I shrink from a puff of wind, if you like, even something affecting in it, but that is all.”

I empathize with his writing style, the way its a mix of metaphor and fluid language, with words like delicacy and seduction, with words like hollow sophistry. He’s fun to read.

“18 October Eternal childhood. Life calls again.”
(that’s my brother’s birthday, p.s.)

Leave a Comment

the punks are writing love songs

February 15, 2008 at 11:50 pm · Filed under General Reflection, Photography ·Tagged , , ,

Uncharacteristically, I am out of things to say at the moment (a possible side effect of feeling obligated to write something.) I think I’ll focus on my new fascination with my digital camera. I never knew what the little ‘flower’ setting on my camera was (I subscribe to the “manuals are for losers” school of thought) until I ran across a mini explanation of the function on lifehacker. Macro setting! I never knew my little fuji digital camera, one I thought to be on the lower end of the spectrum, could produce such cool effects.

zachary macro-ed

My faithful subject displays a particularly ‘un-phased’ expression at our Panera breakfast. I also took many pictures of the styrofoam cup and the receipt, but no one really needs to know how much I paid for my chai latte.

I don’t know much about developing photos the old school way with chemicals and dark rooms, that’s why I always hesitate to say I’m anything but average with photography. It’s something I love to do, something if I had loads of money and free time I’d invest in some better equipment and the introductory knowledge. I am my father’s daughter when it comes to photography; we both love the line structure and geometry of photographs, can appreciate color in image just as much black and white (I scoffed at a former roommate who insisted that black and white developing makes everything so much more dramatic.) To be honest, I think that it takes a lot more talent to make a color-image dramatic.

Read the rest of this entry »

Leave a Comment

prompt one

February 14, 2008 at 10:00 pm · Filed under Class Prompts ·Tagged ,

I struggled to think of somewhere I could go for this assignment, a few minutes without other people around, somewhere I could observe for just a moment. The first place I thought of was this spot on Mill Mountain beyond the exit for the touristy spots, this vista point that I took my mother and grandmother with a former roommate to see the valley. My grandmother hates mountains and kept requesting that we not get out of the car, that we drive back down and get some snacks instead.

I didn’t get to go to that spot before I found something else to write about. This moment was maybe stretching the assignment, since there WERE people involved eventually, I just had about a 20 minute stretch where I was completely isolated. Last night I had a quick hospital stay, the first one since I was younger and having my eye muscles strengthened (what bullshit that was, my eyes still drift in and out of direct focus when I’m tired). It wasn’t anything huge, it was a severe migraine coupled with irritated nerves in my arm thanks to a blood test earlier in the day. I freaked out though, I mean, after a routine blood test my arm started going in and out of a state of numbness and tingling, and then I started throwing up uncontrollably, it was a scary prospect. I’m the lady who doesn’t even take aspirin unless she thinks the headache might cause blood to pour out of her ears, going to the hospital was a huge deal for me. I think at the height of it I had myself convinced that I had a fatal infection. Ah, hypochondria, c’est la vie.

So I chose that twenty minute stretch in a stiff-but-giving hospital bed with a cloth gown wrapped around me, encircled by blue cotton dividers. I was completely alone in my room, and yet somewhat aware of the fact that there were other people in the building. For all I knew, there were people right next to me; but all that mattered was that it was silent where I was, alone inside my throbbing head and swollen eyes. There was a low machine hum that blipped and blooped every 8 seconds, some distant hum of bed rollers being trafficked down linoleum hallways, the starched rustle of sheets.

It’s slightly over dramatic to say something like the twenty minutes alone were “finally time to just think about myself and not other obligations,” because, honestly, I don’t really live my life to make other people happy (at least not as much as I like to say that I do.) I can be as selfish and self centered as any human being. But it was a moment of pampering; albeit not one on par with, say, a day at the spa. No spa I know of gives out disgustingly pink bed pans with their beds. But for a moment I wasn’t living life for what assignments were due, what forms needed to be signed, etc. It was calming in it’s florescent way. And despite the inherent difficulties of being physically ill, I really appreciated the silence, the white noise of the place.

Leave a Comment

towards tiny cities made of ashes

February 12, 2008 at 3:49 am · Filed under General Reflection ·Tagged , , ,

(no introductions, i’ll just jump in here)

pulling into roanoke this morning after another spontaneous and brilliant and well deserved “i’ll just wing it one more night in NC and just leave at dawn the next morning and totally make it to school ten minutes before my first class,” i was met by a surreal haze of smoke and falling ash. the mountains were edged with white smoldering clouds. it was like something had exploded; like i had stepped into a fireplace when i stepped out of the car at the cheapest gas station to feed the gas light just a little bit.

apparently i missed quite a night here in the valley by opting to stay in NC; all the bitter winds and blackened mountains lined with orange flames. when i finally collapsed into my room today after running on mismanaged adrenaline and copious amounts of sugar for upwards of five hours, i could see the remnants of the fires slowly fading away. the one thing i do like about this new shoe-box of a room: the view. even after living with front quad at my bed-side, even though this room is appx 8×11, i still prefer the rolling hills and the solitude living alone provides. i guess being the only girl in a two-child home spoiled me to the idea of having my own room, my own space. i put up with roommates because, well, that’s college. but now that the option of solo living is offered, i’m all about it.

i stuck around the writing center tonight just talking like i hadn’t before; talking so candidly with someone new and not hitting the “can i trust you?” wall, well it somewhat restored my faith in humanity, which is something i haven’t been getting these days aside from hand-held confessionals and late night phone calls. i still have friends, i explained, and this sounds conceited but– it’s just that i’ve never had enemies before, you know? it’s not conceited to say, she assured, and we went on to talk about the difficulties of divorcing yourself from bad relationships (romantic or otherwise); the inherent bravery in just silently picking up and leaving.

the talk was refreshing to say the least; this is conceited to say, but it’s nice sometimes to have a fresh set of ears on a problem (one of the writing center mantras, nonetheless, so i guess we technically did some work tonight after all). it’s not even a problem anymore i suppose. like the brush fires, the ’situation’ was this scary fiery dramatic mess on top of a mountain of issues, but in the smoldering aftermath it left puffs of smoke, ashes falling like snowflakes, a surreal beauty (someone said eloquently, ‘this is so sick but like, it was beautiful to see the fingers of the flames on the mountains,’), just another notch in my ever-expanding ‘college experience.’

i had this flickering thought today that i don’t want a serious job at all. i’ve never wanted to teach (unfortunately, the first thing people think of when i say “yes, i’m an English major,”). my main thought was publishing, an editor, but the problem with my life is that i am neither cut-throat nor ambitious. i don’t want to be alpha dog, or the top of the ladder. i’d rather not be someone’s boss. i like the idea of proofreading manuscripts because it delays the inevitable, “where’s your manuscript,” (invariably the second thing people think to ask.)

i am not ready for class tomorrow (or wednesday)

but i am certainly ready to go get married and do something impulsive like open a record store with my boyfriend.

or learn how to develop pictures.

or play keyboard in a twee pop band.

or write screenplays.

something. i’ll figure it out later.

Leave a Comment