Pretentious

After weeks of anxiety-ridden procrastination, I took up arms against The Final Paper. It's my own fault, really. The topic chosen is far too ambitious for an undergrad term paper; I could easily write my Masters thesis on it.

I've spent the day tilting at windmills too theoretical and boundless to stay still! Little frakkers keep shifting... shifty frakkers... if I could just get a decent grip on the theories I'm chasing...

Oh, alright, I'll admit to it: I'm writing on the debate over the literary canon. The wha-? Yeah, who knows at this point. It's simultaneously obscure and far too important. This debate is what defines Jr. High, High School and most University English class curriculum. This debate is a glimpse into the American Nationalistic consciousness, a whiff of what makes us Us. What does that mean? Who the hell knows.

What I do know is that I am completely unqualified to enter into this dialogue . I've not even begun to read said List, let alone be an authority to submit commentary on it.

This topic is pretentious. It's quixotic. It's all abstract theory and at this point theory begets theory begets theory begets theory. My paper is turtles, all the way down.

Read in ignorant bliss my friends, read in ignorant bliss. And never, ever, take a Critical Theory class. There's no blue pill at the end of the semester.

PS- Jason, if you're reading this, it's not you, it's me.

PPS- For the record, I'd like it to be known that while I bitch and moan about Theory Babble, I'm secretly in love with it. It's a mind job, to be sure.

Bicylce Love

The slow (and sometimes stalled) process of fixing up my once rust-bucket bike has come to a triumphant end.

It is ridable; I am riding. I am learning how to balance thin road tires, I am hunched over ram horn handlebars; I am ecstatic and may be in love with this bike. I've brought it inside and will hang it from my ceiling. In the meantime, my ass is sore.

It has snowed for three days straight. Today I stopped waiting for it to clear and layered on thick socks, thermal base clothes, water resistant pull-overs, woolly hat, gloves. I peddled willingly through the wet and slushy streets, contentedly shwish-shwish-swishing.

Half-rain, half-snow spattered and clouded my glasses, blurring the finer details of my neighborhood. I huffed up the hills and beamed as I flew back down them. My nose was numb, my cheeks stung with wind, my fingers stiffed around the bars. My legs, however, were delightfully warm.

I <3 this bike.

Quiet, Please, I'm Studying

Apparently impending English paper deadlines is prime time for my brain to abandon all matter of meaningful, intelligent, constructive writing and frolic instead in the sandbox of the blog. Ooo! I think as I stare at outlines, prompts and notes, I have ideas for posts! Of course. Why wouldn't this be a good time?

I get plenty of writing done, just not of the Critical Theory Response Essay kind. What I need is to stay enrolled in Jason’s classes for the rest of my career so that I can write with a false sense of urgency under the pretense of his deadlines.

And, as expected, Jonesy is now a distracted squirrel leaping between shiny thoughts. Which is the segue I’ll use to excuse this somewhat non-sequitur of a comic:

(I may, or may not, also peruse xkcd while evading English paper deadlines.)

Hey! I think I just had an idea for a paper.

Sun Valley

Where do you, where do you go? My lovely…

I’m a little sunburned, I’m a little bruised. The little muscles on the sides of my ankles protest in the mornings. Such are my colorful reminders of an overexposed weekend.

It’s taken me a week to land. The plane may have touched down in a matter of minutes, but it has taken me seven days and, just last night, twelve hours of uninterrupted sleep to land back into my Life. I return to find the ground here is too soft…

Tissue-thin images float around my day and settle, like dust, on my mind. You are an evanescent presence- in my thoughts, on my phone, in my dreams, but nowhere to be seen. I keep with the most immediate of memories, nursing them like sour beer: your brilliant blues haloed in fluorescent blonde. Forgive me if I stared.

Your punchy, lilting giggle hits me in the gut, arrests my attention and pulls out my own smile- I cannot help but laugh.

***

Birdcall trilled beyond the window and shouting voices bounced between the towers. Sunlight fell against the wall in a single wide, brilliant streak. Overhead the ceiling fan swirled tinktinktink-pink. I studied the ink inches from my nose and breathed deep- filling my lungs of you. My frontal lobes of consciousness lay heavy in contentment, my grasp of reality delightfully fuzzy. Deliciously pinned under your sleeping weight I lay awake inside a dream. I studied the room with watchful eyes (trappings and trimmings of a half-way stranger) while your steady breathe kept alternate-time with the fan.

Iron & Wine

Boy with a coin he found in the weeds,

with bullets and pages of trade magazines.

Close to a car that flipped on the turn,

when God left the ground to circle the world.

Happy Days

1982

These are my parents before they were married. Whoa. Check out that double perm action.

Observation of the Day

I occasionally sleep with earplugs, which I buy in packs. Over the years I've periodically replenished my supply, but not without noticing that there is always a singular earplug remaining in the old bag. Hm.

One would think that since, you know, we have two ears the earplugs would come packaged in some even number. I suspect this is not the case.

Please note: I cannot confirm this because the cardboard packaging has long since been thrown away. I can only speak to my speculations and the lonely earplug remaining in the bag. I also do not care enough to earnestly look into this problem.

I Share Interests with a Four-Year-Old Boy

The other day I took a detour from my usual route to class and happened to walk past the childcare center at my college. As I walked down the hall, a man and (presumably) his son walked out the door. The boy could not have been more than four. The man was saying, “The Doctor Seuss (mumblemumble)? Is that what you’re calling it?” My ears perked up.

“Nnoooo, the Doctor WHO scarf”, the boy emphatically corrects the man.

I beam with pride, delight, surprise and suppress the urge to high-five this little kid.

“Oh, ok, here you go” the man says and begins to wrap a scarf (albeit not the Doctor Who scarf) around the boy’s neck. He says something about it being “really long, huh?”

By this time I am approaching and am about to pass them. I decide I must weigh in on this conversation. “It is an awesome scarf, isn’t it?”

The kid looks at me in the way little kids gape at strangers. The man, however, picks up my sympathies towards the scarf and gives a hearty laugh while saying, “Yes, yes!” I grin down at the kid as I walk past and wish that I had time to discuss the finer details of the scarf with him. I’m sure his opinions would have matched mine.

All in all I am pleased that the Doctor Who fan base reaches four-year-old American boys.

Postcards From Italy

I play Beirut as a votive for summer, in remembrance of sun and shine hot on my shoulders and of blindly bright noon days. He is my sound of summertime freedom and summertime love.

This Mercurial Life

Sitting cross-legged on a tiny, concrete deck many stories in the air. It’s sunrise, it’s still, it’s already warm. I cradle a cup of coffee, pressing it against my lips. I hear church bells. I smell wet stone, hot dryer sheets, rain-fragrant air. It is the pitch-perfect frequency and silent melody of early morning. I’m waiting for the shade-lines to reach the ground. I stare at the sun steaks and he quietly joins me, sitting down in pajama pants and his own cup of caffeine without a word.

***

Breezing out a store-front door on a busy city street. It’s raining, I’m hurried, I do not pause to look around. I straighten the strap of my bag across my shoulder, I blow on my steaming mug. The zssshhhsssss of tires on damp asphalt (and engine rumbling underneath) whisks past me. I tug at the collar of my long canvas coat and navigate the people. Car horns double-punctuate the white noise.

***

Cooking breakfast in my long flannel shirt with music playing in the other room. Dancing to the beat. Orchestrating my spatula among eggs, sausage, potatoes. Bare feet patpatpat-ing on cold linoleum. Two ceramic plates clinking and pinking and scraping in my hands.

***

Sitting in a sunlit room in an overstuffed chair. Window thrown open to midday weather, wind and street-sounds seeping through. Legs like pretzels underneath me, heavy hard-backed book alternatingly up to- then away from my nose. A white cat tightrope-walks along the chair’s back frame. Dust particles in sun shafts drift to the carpet, my skin breathes in prickly warmth. I pat the cat, the wind plumes the curtains. I hear keys jingle in and crunch open the front door’s lock.

I feel small and large against life, my life. Passive and active, swept up yet swept away. Flickering abstractions of an idealized life in cinematic resolution.

In Which I Believe I've Been Propositioned, Part Deux

While I remain stuck sheerly on the topic this conversation has turned to, he dives into an endorsement, nay, testimony about how he's been ahem a swinger for ten years. Like I said, I remain stuck on the fact that I'm now discussing my and my coworker's sex life at 7:00am.

Let me pause and place some of this oddity into context: Guy is, how shall I say... part Sheldon Cooper, part John Nash. He speaks higher-level mathematics. He programs software in 28-hour stretches. He's not quite asocial, but nearly. He has a lovely monitor tan. He single-handedly keeps blue-colored energy drinks in business. He's beyond brilliant and is as such a package deal: genius and eccentricity. I've hardly ever envisioned Guy outside of his cubicle and am now being required to envision him at swinger parties. Yes. Let us once again pause to place the aforementioned Guy into a meat market.

My mind wanders...I continue to blink. I think my brow is knit together in combination concern and confusion.

"...and it doesn't matter what they think because you're all gonna be naked in 30 minutes anyway!" ... Is the line that realigns my focus.

I laugh, against intention.

"It doesn't matter what they think?" I echo back.

"Nah. At first you're nervous, you're thinking 'Are they attractive? Do they find me attractive?' I used to be so nervous when I would meet a couple..." Again, I'm jolted with images of Guy at velvety bars and hazy swinger parties.

He continues, "You avoid all that hassle that is in dating. You don't have to stress about building a relationship that will inevitably fail, you just find a few people you click with and spend a few months with them."

My mind keeps wandering.... Hhmmm... I'm actually becoming curious about this. I listen to Guy's description of the lifestyle and honestly wonder if this is something that I would be capable of.

I then contemplate the terminology of "swinger". Since I am not married, could I really be called such? I'd really just be a slut, wouldn't I?

"You know, Guy, this sounds like skydiving to me: I just have no way of knowing if I'll be able to jump until I'm in that plane." He nods, knowingly. "I really have no idea if I'd be able to do it."

"Well, I can let you know when the next get-together is."

I may, or may not, have nodded vaguely.

"You don't have to make a lifestyle out of it; just whenever you want to come out and play." (Play. Did he just say "play"?)

Again, I think there was nodding on my part.

"Or I can give you my phone number. You can text me if you're interested."

*blinkblink*

"O-uh, o-ok..."

Was I just propositioned?

Courtesy of xkcd.com

In Which I Believe I've Been Propositioned, Part 1

Office workers everywhere can attest to the Monday morning ritual of How was your weekend, Bill? Did you have a good weekend Mary? It's part of the office Daily Digest and is uttered and endured with little to no thought.

Except- when it isn't.

I dressed this morning (Monday morning, to clarify) in a silky, turquoise pull-over blouse that has a plunged neck-line and gathers from four corners into a knot of fabric right between my breasts. This will be important momentarily.

I arrived at work early and found that my area was empty apart from my cube-mate; a guy who normally arrives many hours later than I. Since it's an oddity to see him so early, and since he and I usually have very little time to talk as friends, I sat down and begun the Daily Digest: "You're here early. How was your weekend?"

"Oh, fine" he said (par for the course). "How was yours?"

"By turns shitty and delightful", I said, casting aside the bland response of fine.

He gave me the look that I've come to know as meaning he is interested but is refraining from directly inquiring for politeness. I laughed.

While I began telling him that I've recently begun misadventures in dating, I stood to take off my coat and hang it up. I remained standing, describing the recent regrettable dates I've been on while Guy chimes in with "Ah, yes..." and "Mm-hmm...".

He settles in to respond, but before he's gotten two words into his thought he stops, as if struck with a newer, shinier thought, and says, "That shirt looks really good on you" (I smile and mummer thanks) and he nods in assurance. "It uh- really accentuates, uh-" and chokes off the rest of that thought with slightly wide eyes, an awkward smile, and noncommittal hand gestures in the upper torso area.

I suddenly become hyper-aware of the thin polyester that I've chosen to cover my body today. I bite my own cheek and do the faint breath-laugh of the embarrassed. I sit down and allow the cube wall to hide said accentuation.

We continue our conversation.

He is also single and he tells me that he shares my impatience for weeding out the immature, the neurotic, the unenlightened.

"Why am I even doing this?" I ask, rhetorically.

"Because you have certain needs and you find that dating is the way to satisfying these needs", he says, just a little too quickly. I nod and display my Consideration Eyebrows.

"There is an easier way, though, you know?" He lays this question down in a style reminiscent of bribes being slid across tables.

"Um..." I'm not sure if I do, actually.

He scoots his chair a little closer to the wall, so as not to be overheard. "Do you know what swinging is?"

*blinkblink*

Yes. Yes I do.

(That's right! It's a two-part story! Tune in tomorrow kids to hear the conclusion of Monday's proposition.)

Dreams of Better Fodder

I’ve recently begun dreaming of the sea. Dreaming of the white, ice-laced, cloud-hung, chopping glacial waters of the Arctic, Baltic, Greenland and Norwegian seas.

I dream of traveling over them, traveling to them, drifting in them. I sail and scale the waters as if inside an Escher drawing: a möbius sea of block-like oceanic levels.

The cold is the most memorable: stabbing winds and stinging rain. The kind of cold that whips you conscious, rudely waking the part of your brain that sleeps warm and cozy, cushioned and hidden away, rarely used. Crystalline perception, tuned only to the cold.

Faint images of maps float inside my mind as I float around my oceans. I mentally track my movement with these maps, none of which hold any accuracy to the waking world. Once, I was traveling north to reach my seas and I watched the passage of desolate land on my false map. I remember being eager, yet rattlingly nervous to reach my northern waters.

Familiarity and strangeness permeate the dreams; it is as if I am returning to a familiar place after a long stay away. I know these seas and yet I don’t. Perhaps they’re in my own country and I’ve never visited them, or they are my family’s roots and I’m just discovering them. Perhaps I sailed through here long ago and am only just remembering.

I woke last night from a sea dream. I’d passed over thousands of desolate, remote acres covered in ice sheets. I had been standing in my boat balancing the pitch and roll of a storm. As I slowly came to consciousness I could feel the wind lifting the roots of my hair and blowing icy furls down my neck.

My Rocky Road to Washington

One, two, three, four, five

Hunt the hare and turn her

Down the rocky road

All the way to Washington

Wack-fol-lol-de-ra

I am painting a picture so large I can never see the whole thing at once. My nose is pressed into the minutia of the monumental undertaking and I cannot orchestrate between details. I get lost between tasks, among responsibilities, buried in this dream almost ten years in the making.

I have vague notions about how I want my life in Washington to look; a picture of generalities, cinematic-style scenes of me going about my business, half-baked ideas about where to take my life while I’m there, snippets of an imaginary identity not yet realized.

One, two, three, four, five

Hunt the hare and turn her

Down the rocky road

All the way to Washington

Wack-fol-lol-de-ra

It’s a leap of faith I cannot figure out how to take. I’ve painted a dream in Washington, but am hammering out a reality in Utah. I have two islands of identity I cannot figure out how to bridge. I’ve created scenario after scenario, option after option, Plan B after Plan A, but still cannot make the decisions on precisely when, or exactly how.

It’s a bittersweet issue to chew on. In some sick way I love the struggle, always have, but hate the, er- struggle of it all. Why does the picture have to be so damned big, so damned complex, so damned detailed and so damned personal? Why couldn’t I be content to grow roots in Utah? BWAHAHA! Yeah, right.

I am in limbo and in flux. Any number of things could change, need to change, for any number of other things in my life to sink into place. It’s a maddening game of dominos, Jenga and chess all rolled into one. It’s turned into an overwhelming gear-driven mechanism that cannot move without affecting all the other cogs.

One, two, three, four, five

Hunt the hare and turn her

Down the rocky road

All the way to Washington

Wack-fol-lol-de-ra

How do you eat an elephant? One bite at a time.

What We Drank

This weekend's beer was new: Labyrinth Black Ale by Unita Brewing company. It's an award-winner: overall A- rating and 2010 Imperial Stout champion.

Me and the dark beer are friends. Me and this dark beer looked good on paper, but failed to hit it off in person. It's a mighty-fine concoction: lots of chocolatey overtones, woody and bitter, think and viscous. It hit me in the gut as if it were whiskey. I should have known they may be a problem when it came packaged like champagne bottle (heavily corked and wired bottles make me nervous).

Perhaps we can go out on a second date and try it again.

Why I Always Trust My Piper Instincts

Piper sammich + stein of beer + Geeks Who Drink night ≠ brilliant English paper

But, apparently:

Piper sammich + stein of beer + Geeks Who Drink night = calling Fate’s bluff with fortuitous results

I arrived in English class today, without a paper, only to have my English Professor revise his paper model to allow for "journal response essays" to be turned in whenever.

Huzzah!

Mad, Small, World

While I procrastinate the Biology homework, there is a "Small World" story I must share:

The semester begins and I find myself in a Biology lecture. At some point I also find myself speaking with a gal that I know I've met before, but cannot place her name or face. Just before I ask, "Do I know you?" the lecture begins and I'm cut short.

After class this girl turns to me and says, "I was going to ask you, have we met before?" Ha! I knew it. Thus begins the exchange of class schedules- maybe we've had a class together?

I'm staring at her face trying to place a context around her familiarity. All of a sudden lightening (or the hand of God, who knows) strikes my brain and I burst out: "Do you know a Lisa?"

My question is met with squeals of recognition and lo and behold this girl is a friend of a friend who I've not seen in ten years. How in the hell I was able to divine her identity out of a fog of vague memories is beyond me. But I'm willing to accept the gold star for doing so.

Updates on the reunion with said friend to follow.

Caffeine Status

4 shots of espresso + Jimmy John's sammich = a lean, mean Biology homework machine.

Party on, Wayne

Party on, Garth

Weep Little Lion Man

Mumford & Sons has gripped the musically-obsessed side of my persona by its nose and lead it to indulge the "repeat" button, again and again.

These men are simply inspired.

Mumford & Sons is, most definitely, Wombat endorsed.

In The Time Between

Last night there was a stranger in my life. Intimately close, familiar only in proximity, and shockingly alien. Who are you?

His eyes were sky blue, crinkled around the edges. This is what I know of him. The rest is marginalia. I listened, and laughed (at myself, at us, at this), but remained immobile. I heard he was this and that, wanted such and such, and etcetera. But it was his eyes I knew. Depth too close, faux-inviting, teetering on the edge of wanting? to fall in.

There is last night and there is now. The Now is full of me and mine: schedules, appointments, workworkwork, and the noisey-yet-quiet only my apartment offers. It is full of plans, and tomorrow, and the hum of my rhythmic life. It is “The Me”. And The Now is punctuated with solicitous reminders of… well, whatever the hell that was. Scraps of evening I’m not sure I was quite present for.

Order is restored with the making of my bed.

What Do You Do With a BA in English?

I'm secretly, and increasingly, afraid that I am not smart enough for my English degree.

I'm actually not wholly convinced that this is what I should study (oh shit! confession made). It's only by process of elimination that I've arrived here. I know I'm not a chemist, I know I'm not a mathematician, a musician, an artist, a biologist, etc. etc, so on and so on until I reach the oh so logical conclusion that I therefore must be an English person.

Yes, I read (ad nasium). Yes, I take every opportunity to edit my cereal boxes' grammar. Yes, I could listen to my English professor go on and on about literature and theory all while wishing he was in a tweed jacket, but isn't there also supposed to be that inner knowing that yes, I AM a writer? Hm?

I surround myself with books, I listen to NPR, I sip coffee and read blogs. I'm more interested in unpacking a book's purpose than unpacking my purpose in doing so. I keep The List, ever-revised, ever-growing, of all the things I need to read before I can arrive as a credentialed academic. After all these habits are performed, after all my books are read, after I cough out some half-baked thought about authorial intention, diction, rhyme, meter, yaddah yaddah... what then?

I'm afraid that I'm just a dime-a-dozen English degree; a useless BA with no real talent or flare. I'm still hoping for my professors' approval, thinking them the gate-keepers to the discipline. And I'm therefore afraid that these gate-keepers will weed out the weak, the mediocre, the uninspired.

Maybe I'll just be a professional appreciator, instead.

Go Forth & Listen

I less than three NPR and RadioLab.

http://www.radiolab.org/2010/aug/09/

If I could accomplish something half as cool with my BAs I would consider myself content.