Isn't this momentous? This moment, right now? Shouldn't I be documenting it for safe-keeping, or at least as safe as I can online.
(I apologize. Though I update, I cannot take my blogs seriously and everything comes out tongue-in-cheek. Don't expect me to be the sincere narrator that you may have imagined me to be.)
Tomorrow I declare a major. So what?
I'm twenty years old and I am an undeclared major. Is one-fifth of my life over? Like that? I've spent a fifth of my life undeclared! Quelle horreur!
Well, thank God above and the WCAS Advising office, because tomorrow I will take one step forward in life with a so-called direction and therefore justifiable footing! I travail, I succeed, I fail! Who cares? I can stand up, one legged bent up, propped up on the soapbox in front of me and cry out: So what, World? I've got my major and I've got my skin, and you've got nothing on me.
The funny thing about all this is that I've known all along that I'm okay. But in the grand showcase of Northwestern, it helps to say: I'm majoring in biotechnicalpsychopseudomacrotheologichemical studies!
I have three plans. Three futures. I blow on the dice and let the divine hands of various Northwestern administrative officials determine my fate. May they bless the academic land we all walk upon.
It would be sufficed to say that there is another theme to my life lately. A strange, dreamlike clarity to all that happens to me. I sometimes reach these moments of lucidity where I am all ages of myself at once, with heightened sense and sharp thought. I'm not sure it so much helps me academically, but that's not so much what's important.
If I can feel like I'm six years old, gap-toothed with chocolatey fingers from baking, twenty, blossoming and ready to declare a major, and forty-three, relishing in work and maternity (here I go predicting my future), then I am someplace good, because I am someplace good in all those places.
This theme correlates with another, a sense of coming full-circle. The inhalation and exhalation of one void of air, big enough only to fill a pair of lungs. The strange circuity of seering pain, embered anger, and the lifting smoke where there is release. The sudden collapse of breath when first touched, the heated and heightened breath of ecstasy, the quiet breath of common understanding. One touch can circle a wrist infinitely. The wrist requests what it wants.
A man stands on a rocky beach by a small lake. In his hand, he works a stone over and over in anger. With each skin-rawing revolution of the stone in his palm, he justifies his anger by replaying what happened. But like sand through a sieve, the memories fade as he recalls them. They sift in confusion, falling upon one another grain upon grain, indistinguishable from the rest. Soon he has lost the justification, the reasoning. He is left with only the feelings, or more accurately, the chaffing of the lake-rock between his fingers. He turns the stone faster, almost manically, forcing his energy against its bumpy surface and irrationally imagining the fatty grooves of his fingerpads disappearing. With that last thought, he suddenly lets his hand go limp, the rock dropping blankly back to the rocky beach earth. He stares at the lake that stretches complacently before him. Will the loons come again this afternoon? he wonders. Their soft-spoken laments often please him in a quiet way, drawing pleasure from their common expression of sadness. Maybe they miss something. He looks down by his bare feet where the rock had dropped and realizes that he cannot distinguish his rock from the other dull-faced stones staring up at him. Without thinking, he digs his toes into the stones, thoughtlessly scattering them with a jolt of his foot. Breathing deeply, he turns away from the lake and walks toward the car, his mind a steamy fog lifting to reveal remnants of lost thoughts. The fact that one of those tediously gray stones on the beach was still hot from the friction of his fingers doesn’t occur to him. He absent-mindedly rubs his right hand, raw from he-doesn’t-know-what.
I have lost faith in backspacing.
Wednesday, January 26, 2005
Momentous Occasions!
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
Nyquil is my lover; Dayquil is my muse
This medicated state I'm in is the most wonderful and bizarre thing. I went to bed last night around 12:15 and got up at 9:50. I showered, got ready, and then collapsed in fetal position on my bed.
Needless to say, I decided not to go to my first class of the day.
I have had bizarre dreams too. Two nights ago, the dream I had takes the cake of all bizarre dreams:
I had gone to a circus and/or amusement park-ish place with JP, where we ran into John and Brett, who had been kind enough to save us some seats in the big tent at the circus. Brett suggested we all take a ride on the log chute water-ride and of course, we were all up for it.
However, as we got up to leave the tent, the entire amusement park was besieged by these...critters?... who were attacking us. Kevin "Chops" Brown suddenly appeared, told us he works at the park and he knew the only safe way out was by the log chute. As we ran ahead to catch the log chute and jumped in, Kevin yelled to us: Just so you know, Jenny Tison is at the bottom of the hill dressed up like XZibit!!
And suddenly we were flying down the waterchute and sure enough, there was JT rapping and in the guise of a black man at the bottom. She was there to distract the invaders, apparently. We were all waving to her when suddenly the critter-like things ran out from underneath the waterfall and we were attacked.
I woke up.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
I'm really happy I interviewed Natalia Singer. I really can't describe just how happy I am. Aside from the kindness of Kim to give me a chance to write something in Play, Natalia was just...amazing...and everything I could hope to emanate. Her vibrant personality, impracticality and uncontrollable enthusiasm gives me hope.
Saturday, January 1, 2005
A New Year
It takes a lot of courage to release the familiar and seemingly secure, to embrace the new. But there is no real security in what is no longer meaningful. There is more security in the adventurous and exciting, for in movement there is life, and in change there is power.
--Alan Cohen
Wednesday, December 29, 2004
after the tsunami, snapshots...
when we die, do we become limbs? just faceless, legged remnants of a life lived?
i can't look at these ap and reuters photos of devastation in asia without thinking about that. not since 9/11 have i seen photos that so accurately capture the most visceral human emotion, grief.
the photos are like a morbid peep show into something i would never see here in a commercialized world and 9/11 is probably the closest america will come to it.
photographers freeze-frame mourners' faces, contorted into wrinkled, shut eyes and white teeth bared in now still, silent howls of despair.
two men carry a body out of the rubble of a home. the older man lets a cigarette hang loosely from the corner of his mouth. judging by their blank expressions, one would think that they were bored rather than shell-shocked.
and the carnage. even looking at the pictures, i cannot fathom what it must look like, thousands of bodies piled upon one another, faces turned blue and gray and bloated. what does that look like? what does the air taste like to the woman in this photograph who has wrapped her headdress around her nose and mouth? i sit staring at swollen bodies whose lungs are drowned in water.
what made me lucky enough to live land-locked in america?
the look of devastation is the same everywhere, but this disaster has changed the way i regard it.
Saturday, December 25, 2004
Miracle on Cincinnati Avenue...
And that miracle would be that I got my car ALL the way up my driveway.
After Ohio got bitch-slapped by mother nature herself all day Wednesday and into Thursday afternoon with a little over a foot of snow, we kin who be unaccustomed to such likened weatherins have been done shovelin ourselves outta it for damn near three days.
No really.
Granted, a foot or more (or even less) of snow is substantial. Especially when most of it hits an area in say, a twelve hour period. But for Ohioans, who are used to only about three or four inches at MOST at a TIME, the preparation is not there and thus, we suffer all the way into the weekend.
I worked Wednesday from 9 am til 6 pm. My way there was a near white-out on the highway, where I crawled at about 25 miles per hour or less the entire way. I grimaced every time I looked out the storefront window during my day, dreading that some maniac mother in her SUV would come flying around my car and slam the parked QTPUH2T in the rear. Fortunately, no lunatics destroyed anything and I was able to dethaw my car in about a half hour and leave for my way home. The three to four lane I-71 (home and highway of many an eastern traveler who journeys between Florida and the northeast) had become a one or two lane highway for most of its duration between work and my house. The snow was still falling heavily and aside from narrow, limited lanes and terrible vision, the lanes that had been more or less carved out of the snow were lined by ice that grabbed as I drove and threatened to pull me into the ditch.
I got home and faced the beast that is my driveway. The Family driveway is an uphill battle, lengthened at about, oh, a good 100 yards from street to house. As I attempted to get up the drive, I got no further than three feet up and away from the street and decided I'd park elsewhere for the night. I chose Michael's Pest Control down the street and prayed to the extermination gods above that Michael would not tow my car in the morning.
He didn't.
In fact, he shoveled my car out of the snow for me. Thanks, Mike and your pesty friends.
Thursday, I got my car up our drive by about fifteen feet and left QTPUH2T there for the day.
Today I jumped in the car with an hour to spare before work.
"Meh... if it usually takes me fifteen to twenty minutes to get to work, it'll take me about a half hour to forty minutes today with Christmas shoppers. That'll leave me with a little time to run into Best Buy, grab a few last minute things and then go to work."
Yeah, that's what I was thinking.
But no. Instead, it would take me over an hour and a half to get to work. AN HOUR AND A HALF.
Most of the highway had become a tundra, barren ice and packed snow with still only two-lanes of moving traffic where other cars had carved lanes out of the snow (with no particular care to where the lines HAD been painted). Like a battle between nature and machinery, carnage of wrecked cars rusted and weathered in the shoulders and in snow-banks. Scared for mine and my car's future, I gripped the wheel and fought the grip of the ice and snow as the willy-nilly lanes ebbed and flowed from their nonsensical directions.
I sat in stopped traffic to exit I-71 for over forty five minutes and also spent twenty minutes in the parking lot, fighting for a space and getting stuck in a line of cars where there was no thru-way. (We all had to go in reverse one by one in order to get out of our rubix cube jam.)
I clocked in a half hour late, at 1:30, worked only until 6:30 and still got a half hour break. Rock on, Christmas Eve.
I love working Christmas Eve. It's so hectic, and, at least at Old Navy, I thrive on chaos. The busyness lasted for about two and a half hours before our traffic slowed to just about nothing. Unfortunately, I encountered no unusual customers or extremely angry customers this year as I have in years past.
Customers of note on Christmas Eve:
1. Creepy guy 12/24/02 8:30 am:
Bought only socks and underwear.
Said he "liked my hat" (didn't wear Santa hat after that year to work), worked some lame come-ons in, then cut to the chase asking:
"You know, my friend was supposed to come with me tonight to Florida for Christmas but he can't make it. ((slides plane ticket across counter)) You wanna come instead?"
Uh...Well, uh... That's nice of you, but I think my family is expecting me for dinner.
"Are you sure, baby? I can come back for you later. What time you off work?"
That's really okay. I'm busy.
2. The If-You've-Worked-Retail-You-Know-Which-L
Yeah, that's right. The bitch who not only doesn't have a single penny on her, but has emptied the entire store in her shopping cart and now expects you to take her business check. PERSONAL CHECKS ONLY, PLEASE. After yelling at me, throwing merchandise in my face, and asking for a manager, she requested use of our phone, talked to her husband for ten minutes and at 6:20 pm (we closed at 6 pm), decided she didn't want to buy anything and before leaving yelled, "DON'T YOU GUYS KNOW PEOPLE WANT TO SHOP ON CHRISTMAS EVE? WHY DON'T YOU STAY OPEN LATER??!"
3. The Mom with Eight Kids early afternoon 12/24/any-year
I'm pretty sure this is the same mom every year. She just shows up and wreaks havoc on the store. The same kids. The same hijinks... tearing down posters, throwing ornaments, tossing recently-folded shirts off of tables, wearing the dog-reindeer-ears... And the mom, comatose, deaf, dumb and glassy-eyed.
That's one-hundred eighty-one dollars and thirty-two cents, ma'am.... Ma'am?............. Ma'am?!
Don't bother. She's gone, her kids have taken control of the front half of the cash-wrap and her husband is probably at home, piss-ass drunk and watching football. Let her stay in that silent, safe place that only Old Navy can provide.
Other customers are generally just happy dads who don't give a rat's ass how last-minute their shopping is and give you smiles of encouragement and ask how late you have to work. Others are moms with daughters who are aware of how late they are shopping and just look bug-eyed with the fright and thrill of it. These guys I don't mind at all. But if it weren't for those crazy Christmas Eve customers, could I ever have the claim to fame of having been offered a trip to Florida from Creepy McCreepersons?
Back to the miracle that occured this Christmas Eve...
Once I braved The Tundra--I-71 North, I returned back into safe Lebanon, Ohio, where LaRosa's Pizzeria was open, and in small suburban homes, upper middle classers huddled around their Christmas trees to open Old Navy fleeces from Gramma.
Piddling my way up Cincinnati Avenue, I decided that this bitch of a driveway was not going to get me tonight and so I shifted it up into second gear as I turned and gunned it all the way up, my car shuddered and spitted over the ice and lurched to a halt where the snow heightened into a bank that no shovel nor plow could sunder.
As reward for my excellent driving, a (practically) normal family Christmas Eve was had in the Family household. Complete with a nice dining-room-worthy meal, half-Christmas present unwrapping and PJP2, formerly known as the Pope, giving his Midnight Mass. (The true family tradition, watching Midnight Mass on TV.)
And although there would be no late-night holiday light driving due to the road conditions, the Christmas spirit glowed warm in the Family household that night while they were all nestled in bed with plans of really late sleeping-in danced in their heads.
Saturday, November 27, 2004
Bras!
Today I bought new bras.
(I know this sounds like it's headed nowhere, but bear with me...)
First of all, I don't shop the day after Thanksgiving. In fact, in the first eighteen years of days-after-Thanksgivings I've experienced, either I or my family made a conscious decision to stay inside, cozy up with movies and leftovers, and generally just avoid the conflict that suburban malls bring with them.
So today, when I awoke at 3:00 pm, I thought to myself: Today is the day I will try shopping during this notorious and hellish day.
And indeed, after my 3:30 pm shower and 4:00 pm breakfast of leftovers, I slid into the Beetle, iPod and iTrip close at hand, ready to brave the forces of suburban elitist mothers who drive large SUVs and keep their children at bay with screeching promises of "No dessert!" and "We'll see if you're good enough this year for that toy!!"
((Note: While driving to the lovely Cincinnati Tri-County Mall, I rediscovered my love of driving with the volume up so high that I can shout along with the music and not care what I sound like. Queen, Ray Charles and the Rushmore soundtrack found new homes in the blaring speakers of the Beetle this afternoon.))
I make no pretenses about what I was going to buy. Hell. I stated it right up above. I was buying bras. And, hell yes, I was buying them for myself.
There's nothing more gratifying and/or disturbing in the realm of shopping to a girl than the purchase of intimate garments. I think we can all agree that breasts are pretty awesome and bras are fun things, but they're expensive endeavors. Choose wisely, oh naive shopperette, thine garments wilst stand the tests of self-scrutiny and conscious decision-making: Thou shalt not place thine bra in the firey depths of the DRIER!
But eventually, thou shall, and thou knowst it to be so. But whilst thou stand in front of Victoria Secret's glistened mirrors, thou makest false promises of air-drying.
So hopefully, I haven't lost my entire livejournal audience by discussing laundrying tactics, but this is important. These were the thoughts running through my head while I was deciding while bra to buy.
Buying this underwear at Victoria's Secret (I've never owned one of their bras, by the way...) gave me an opportunity to do some self-reflective and perhaps egocentric thinking. And what better way to do that thinking than doing it while looking at your own reflection??
And, not surprisingly, I figured a few things out.
I haven't hung out with a single person from home since I've been here. I ran into Carolyn working at Kidd Coffee today, but that's the extent of my interaction with "home-folks." And somehow, that's okay.
I guess if this were Christmas break, and I knew I wouldn't be seeing any of them for all that time, I'd be distressed...but maybe not even then.
Instead, right now, I have this inner calm and sense of completeness about who I am and what I am doing. I've talked about my academic future with my parents, and although none of us can definitely know the path it will take, everything seems like it's going to be fine...and more. It will be what I want it to be.
It's having this sudden sense of control that overwhelms me right now. I'm home and home sure isn't what it was two, three or ten years ago...but that's fine. Home now gives me opportunities to be alone and think that school, just as a matter of its essence, cannot...
So maybe that's why when it was just me and my half-naked reflection for a while today at Victoria's Secret, I was thinking:
I know what I want and I know what I am feeling. I know where I want to be and I know who I care about. I want to make the most of myself and I want to make others feel what I feel. And it's alright that I'm at a hiatus right now--things will fall into their places.
That may not make everything okay in the interim. I'll be disappointed. I'll get hurt. I'll fail at times when I hope to succeed. But, with the sense of self I have right now, I challenge the future:
Alright. Show me struggle. And watch me stride through it.
And I'll do it in Body by Victoria style...
Wednesday, November 3, 2004
Indecision 2004
I feel that it is my duty as
1.) A livejournal user
2.) An active member in American society
3.) A legal Ohio citizen
to update above mentioned livejournal in honor of the current election and its incoming results.
I know too many people who walk a fine line between religious morals and politics and confuse the two who voted conservatively today.
I know too many people who have been hurt in the last four years because of the Bush regime.
I know too many families who have lost jobs to a failing economy.
I know too many people who have been sent over to the Middle East, risked their lives, and then after they were told "Mission Accomplished," they were given orders to go over again.
If Ohio, which has been declared by CNN "a green state" aka: too hard to call, goes to Bush... I'm afraid the people who made the mistake today of voting for him will self-righteously postulate their position for the next four years, and come the next forty, they will learn the hard way.
Our generation is the generation that will clean up the mess of this president. Four years is enough. I can't take four more.