Stringless Kite

Return of the tree-painting elf

2010-10-12T13:37:00.002-04:00

I'm gearing up to paint the tree again--this time, to promote a Teach For America campus event on Thursday evening. The tricky part in planning this has been gauging the weather, which has not been cooperating for the past few days. After a beautiful weekend (which left me with an October sunburn at the Bills game), the clouds have rolled in and it's been raining on and off for the past day and a half. This is bad news for my publicity efforts: sidewalk chalking is one of the easiest ways to promote things on campus, but even a ten minute drizzle could negate two hours' worth of work. So now I'm checking the hourly weather religiously, looking for rain percentages for tomorrow and trying to decide what I should spend the most time doing. Chalking or flyering? Tree painting or button making?

Anyway, the tree is a definite. I think I'm going to do it around 6 o'clock tomorrow morning and hope that the Greek groups will not paint over it before Thursday night. It's supposed to start raining in the early hours of Thursday, so I think I'll be good. In the meantime, weather dances are appreciated from anyone and everyone reading.

I call it deadline paralysis

2010-09-22T23:03:00.003-04:00

My work habits in regard to classes are shifting in a worrisome direction. When I'm faced with an impending due date or exam date, instead of just hunkering down and getting the assignment/studying/etc. done, I worry about said task to the point of inaction. I realize how totally inefficient this is, but I really can't help it.

I met with Provost Long today about proposed changes to the curriculum and semester course loads, and in conversation she told me that her calendar is managed completely by her secretary, who hands her a schedule each afternoon with all the places she needs to be present the next day. I think I should hire a secretary, too, to whom I will give my entire tax-free stipend check every two weeks if he/she will make a daily task list for me and organize my too-colorful Google calendar. Additional responsibilities include refusing to engage in any talk with me about the future beyond tomorrow and a willingness to make coffee runs. Inquire via email, though I will hire on-site if prospective employee will take my East Asian history exam tomorrow morning.

"Run mad as often as you choose, but do not faint!"

2010-09-02T22:49:00.002-04:00

--Fanny Price in Mansfield Park

Running mad. Trying not to faint. I can't believe I'm a senior.

Floating schools and thoughts

2010-08-04T19:27:00.007-04:00

It is just shy of five months to the day since I have written a blog post. My audience of about 2 has probably been disappointed to the point of no return, but that is not an excuse to not write anymore.

I came back to the blogosphere just now because I wanted to show this link to someone. I was in a state of mild panic yesterday while thinking about next year and what I'll do if I don't get into Teach For America when I found this website called Real Gap Experience. The company sponsors service trips abroad for various lengths of time that you pay to go on, in most cases, and the link above is to a program in Cambodia where you do a teaching project on a floating school near Angkor Wat. I don't know what it is about Cambodia, but ever since last semester I've had this little obsession in the corner of my brain with the country and its people. I can not explain it, and yes, I know it's weird. But the program sounds so cool.

Anyways, looking at the website reminded me of two things: one, that things are going to be okay next year, and two, that I am about to be set loose upon the world. It was a pretty liberating reminder.

Happy Pansy Rollerskate

2010-03-05T12:00:00.005-05:00

I think that kooky band names can be really great sometimes: the Flaming Lips, Neutral Milk Hotel, Chumbawumba . . . I'm all for artistic license. But I just got an email from the WGSU server about upcoming shows in the area, and I think that I've found the wrong side of that fine line in the band name Positive Juice Restaurant.

To their credit, I certainly took note of them. Unfortunately, it was to wonder if each member of the group had blindly pointed to a word in the dictionary as a sad last resort in naming themselves. I hope that Positive Juice Restaurant's lyrics come about in a different way, for their sake.

Revisionist history

2010-03-04T02:53:00.001-05:00

My latest hang-up has been the Cambodian genocide under the Khmer Rouge in the 1970s--namely, the fact that I'd never known about it before this semester. We've been focusing a lot on Cambodia and the Khmer civilization in my Southeast Asia class, and while the bulk of it has been on the region in ancient times, a lot of the literature mentions the fact that Cambodia was inaccessible to researchers from the Western world for a significant portion of the 1960s and -70s because of the Khmer Rouge. I started researching it, and ended up writing the poem I had due for class last week about it; namely, about the fact that the Khmer Rouge killed people who wore glasses simply because they were stereotypical signs of intellect.

It just makes me feel really uncomfortable that virtually the only genocide ever taught about in public school was the Holocaust, which involved the killing of white Europeans rather than an ethnic group systematically categorized as an "other." While I'm not in any way insinuating that the Holocaust shouldn't be a focus of study, I think that making it the sole focus inevitably leaves out so many other gross crimes against humanity that really need to be addressed. History is subjective, and telling one story necessarily means that there are other, concurrent stories that don't get told. Rationally, I know that this is the unfortunate but necessary reality of telling history--or any story, for that matter--but the English major in me is clamoring for some sort of revisionist history that tackles the phenomenon of genocide in a more broad, comprehensive way.

On a less gloomy note, and to continue in a way with revisionist history, read Eavan Boland's poetry. She's way into historical revisionism from a feminist standpoint, and is just generally cool. She read at the Yeats School this past summer, accompanied by a harpist . . . the reading took place in this old chapel with stained glass windows, and I sat in the front row of the balcony peering over the edge at the top of her head, listening to her wonderful brogue and her wonderful words. Oh, to have a cup of Irish tea right now . . .

Waiting to thaw

2010-02-24T09:50:00.004-05:00

The chalkboard outside Muddy Waters reads "Days 'til Spring: 23." I think everyone's counting down.

On a related note, it's snowing.

EDIT: There is a snowstorm coming to Western New York tonight. Expected snowfall: 12 inches.

A big fat societal problem

2010-02-22T14:38:00.003-05:00

I'm working on a paper for Western Humanities that addresses the ethical issue of airbrushing from the perspectives of writers we've looked at thus far--Locke, Franklin, Wollstonecraft, etc. It's an interesting assignment, but reading articles about airbrushing while looking at botched photoshop jobs of women is reinforcing the fact that my brain has been effectively tuned into the lie of fashion advertising. When I see a "photograph" of a woman whose head is wider than her hips, my first thought is Huh, lucky bitch instead of OH MY GOD THAT IS CLEARLY UNNATURAL AND ANATOMICALLY IMPOSSIBLE. The reigning image of beauty is that of marzipan pulled taut over a wire hanger. I hate that it's a problem in our society, and I hate that I feed into it.

One of the most disheartening things I read was that even the recent Dove "Campaign for Real Beauty" that featured 'real-sized' women used airbrushing to smooth things out. Apparently, one of the goals of human perfectibility is to become aerodynamic. My goal? To rewire my brain so that when it processes an image of a woman whose cheeks have been hollowed out with an ice cream scooper, I can recognize its inanity.

Coffee, coffee everywhere . . .

2010-02-11T12:07:00.005-05:00

. . . but not a drop to drink this morning at 97 Main because my travel mug is lost! After tearing apart the kitchen and my room in frantic search, it was painful looking at the pot of brewed coffee I couldn't possibly drink at 8:52, eight minutes before Western Humanities. I considered making it in a ceramic mug, but the thought of balancing it all the way down the icy hill to class seemed destined for failure.

I've seen two people today carrying the same Muddy Waters travel mug as my lost one. Everyone's a culprit.

Cavity

2010-02-05T02:03:00.004-05:00

I.

After it all went dark, he whispered to her
low growl reverberating, low note
a bow pulled along the bass string
of her spine the better to keep you close,
my dear while Grandma whimpered softly.

And that is how Red found herself settled
in the swelled belly of an unlikely lover,
cradled woman that now lived at the pace
of his caged animal heart. She sang him lullabies
until the ceiling of her world rose and fell

in slow heaves, traced letters on the fleshy walls
of his stomach, spelling words he guessed or couldn't.
When he laughed, she was anointed by faint light
from a place unremembered, because maybe
this is all she ever wanted or could want.

He came to her draped in canvas tents,
unhinging jaws to swallow whole the glowing flame
of all she was, the empty filling the empty:
the sunken cavity of his abdomen
bloating to the belly of a stone Buddha.

II.

When the axe ripped through his furry coat
Grandma fainted mid-novena, leaving Red
to protest too late the cesarean that had torn apart
her world. Standing above him, she felt his nose was cold
and wet. She knew it couldn't have lasted.

Grandma didn't speak again, only rocking
back and forth, bloody organ in a jar
now her always metronome. Red's eyes
looked for something and nothing, both empty and full.
The wine from her basket was gone.

These days, it is always too bright for the lonely,
who whisper the coming of a prophet reborn
cloaked in the trappings of a wolf's hide.
She roams the woods at night
howling lullabies in hollow tones.

This is the first draft of a poem I have to hand in on Monday . . . I have one due every week. We've been reading a lot of poems based on myth and after coming across an Anne Sexton poem called "Rapunzel," I decided to try something in that vein rather than come up with an original theme, which more often than not (read: always) turns out being totally unoriginal and painful to write. Anyways, for reasons unknown I started thinking about Little Red Riding Hood and the bastardization above is what happened . . . unwittingly, an exploration of Little Red's Stockholm syndrome. Oh dear.

I'm only up this late because it is Thursday in Geneseo, and the sad reality of living on Main Street is that if I'm not asleep before 11 o'clock, I can't fall asleep until after 2 o'clock when the bars close. Unfortunately, I didn't make curfew . . . but I did get my poem done at the very least. Other good news: it is officially Friday. TGIF!

Update from the hideout

2010-02-02T12:01:00.004-05:00

Confession: I'm at Muddy Waters, hiding from my disaster of a room. Since I have an early morning class and a late afternoon class every day Monday through Thursday, my routine has been to pack up all my work, take it with me in the morning, then go to the coffee shop for the 3-5 hours between classes and get schoolwork done. The plan has been working spectacularly work-wise--I have my assignments finished for all classes until Monday--but because I'm I've been trying to stay focused on work, the state of my room has suffered quite a bit. Most of my outfits for the past week or so have been chosen at random from the floor, and I've narrowly missed breaking a few limbs while tripping and stumbling across the land mines scattered between the door and my bed. I'm not sure why I'm confessing to this giant gap in domestic housekeeping . . . maybe in acknowledging it, I'll be inspired to do something about it. Maybe.

Last night was our first intramural basketball game of the season--there were no subs, so my strategy for the game was simply to stay conscious, which I more or less did. Little victory. We won the game, and Erin walked off the court with a jammed, swollen finger and I with a smashed, bloody fingernail. The elder Pipe sisters may have to abandon any dreams of becoming hand models, unfortunately, but a Geneseo Intramural Champion tee shirt will be a pretty sweet consolation prize.

In other news, it's snowing.

Sunday night blues

2010-01-24T21:14:00.003-05:00

I've made my morning coffee instead of buying it on the way to class every day this week, which is good for two reasons: one, it means I'm not shelling out the money, and two (and perhaps more importantly), it means I've been waking up early enough to do so. This may or may not have more to do with my relative lack of work than it does with my willpower, but I'll pat myself on the back anyway.

My professor only succeeded in scaring away one student, but another one added the class late so our roster still tallies nine, to his chagrin. The 125 pages of reading I had to do was from Alfred Russell Wallace's The Malay Archipelago, this book that documents the author's journey through the titular region in the 1850s. He stomped around islands shooting anything that moved, collecting pelts and skeletons for various museums back in Europe. A lot of Wallace's "classification" of the different ethnic groups he encounters there is totally offensive and ridiculous, but other than that it wasn't as painful to read as I thought it'd be.

Things that are painful at the moment: trying to write a poem for class tomorrow, and the likelihood that the Vikings are going to the Super Bowl. Egh.

Harrowing mistakes and lost eyeballs

2010-01-20T16:20:00.003-05:00

Today, I sent an email to the members of English Club about tonight's meeting. After logging out of the EC account and back into my own, I realized that the bold-face subject in my inbox read "First meeting of the semseter!!"

It really shouldn't cause me this much distress, but I've been fighting the urge to send a follow-up email that acknowledges the lapse in my usually excellent spelling for about an hour. The online community is doubtlessly judging my incompetence at this very moment. I HATE TYPOS.

In other news, classes began yesterday and already I have 125 pages of reading due tomorrow for a class on the ethnography of Southeast Asia. I think the professor is trying to scare the modest class of nine away--he mentioned at least ten times in the 40 minute introduction to the class yesterday that "probably none of you will want to come back, I'll be shocked if there are half of you here on Thursday." I've already bought the twelve books ("You will read until your eyes fall out this semester," he told us), though, so perhaps to his dismay there will be at least one student in class tomorrow.

Maybe if my eyes do, indeed, fall out, I'll have an excuse for future spelling mistakes in the emails I send.

Over the river and through the woods

2009-12-22T01:19:00.002-05:00

My fifth semester is officially complete . . . three days before Christmas. Tomorrow morning after Erin finishes her last final, we're throwing our stuff in the car and heading home. The route we're taking is about 70 miles longer than the one we normally take to and from Geneseo; since I'm not sure how large the scope of the weird downstate snowstorm was, I'd rather take the Thruway all the way back than take my chances with Rte. 17. Other than said safety precautions, there are about six rest stops en route that contain a Starbucks. I rest my case.

Not to be looking too far ahead, but I'm already working on amending the problems I had this semester, i.e. the utter lack of free time. I'm shaving one class off my workload since I only need two more to graduate from college (!!!), and because I'm not planning on cutting down on the other commitments I have here.

As far as the present goes, though, I'm really looking forward to the break. I have two stories that I need to take a red pen to, one of which I'll be reading at a conference in Pennsylvania this February! I got the acceptance letter a week or two ago, but I've been a bit too busy to even think about it. Now I can, though, which is a wonderful thing.

There really isn't a whole lot going on that warrants space on the Internet . . . I really only logged in because I wanted to share this quote with someone:

"You can never get a cup of tea large enough or a book long enough to suit me."
— C.S. Lewis

Kitties and playwrights

2009-10-22T16:10:00.006-04:00

With Rachel's help, I was able to get an appointment today to meet with Marjorie Chan about my writing. She's a visiting playwright on campus for the week; the theater department is performing one of her plays in December, so her visit has a lot to do with that. I was a little bit worried about it, admittedly--although the opportunity was obviously one not to pass up, handing her my work and then having her tell me what she thinks seemed slightly awkward. Before the meeting, though, I was creeping around on her website and found a link to her Twitter account . . . on it, she posted this video. In my experience, appreciation for goofy cat videos usually has a correlation with compatibility, so after seeing it I was much more enthused about meeting her and less apprehensive about the forceps-to-my-writing thing.

My hypothesis was correct, and she was indeed very nice. I bit my tongue when I felt inclined to talk about silly cats, though. Certain things should remain unspoken. Meow.

A four-legged ghost story

2009-10-18T23:00:00.002-04:00

I rarely take stock in dreams, but I can't stop thinking about the one I woke up from this morning. I dreamed that I was home with my family and while we were all our current ages, suddenly we'd gone back to December four years ago after we had to put our dog Jessie down. The veterinarian knocked on our door with Jessie at her feet, who was placid and quiet but very much alive, telling us that she'd come back. We were all so happy but strangely accepting of the story. Before leaving her with us, the vet suggested that we get a cat to keep Jessie company to prevent her from dying again, so we did--a little brindled kitten that nobody felt attached to because it was only there to keep Jessie with us.

The cat could speak to me. She told me that she felt cheated out of a real family and that she wanted someone to love her for who she was rather than feeling used (a little My Sister's Keeper, I guess), so I apologized and we became friends. The cat translated things between me and Jessie, who couldn't speak human, and that was that.

Silly, right? I don't know why, but it's been bothering me all day. Maybe it's just the fact that someone (because yes, our dog was a someone) I loved so much was conjured up at such a weird time, completely unprompted. I don't know. It made me feel homesick and sad and old and small.

A stranger's stages of grief

2009-10-06T22:09:00.006-04:00

I'm sitting on the couch with Katy, doing work and listening to classical music on YouTube. After clicking on Ralph Vaughan Williams' Greensleeves, I happened to see one of the comments that a prior visitor to the site posted about the song while listening to it:

Bitter joy when your loved one leaves you for good... Anger & joy... Sadness... Yearning, and finally... You are over with it...

I don't recommend heavy drinking while listening these master pieces... You'll just break your heart...

A little bit funny, and a little bit tragic. Oh, the humanity!

Bad hair days

2009-09-30T11:23:00.001-04:00

Something I learned today: one way to measure relative humidity is by using a hair hygrometer, an instrument that operates through the use of human hair. The hygrometer is super-accurate because hair's consistency changes up to 4% based on humidity. Isn't that crazy?!

Today, however, is not one of those days that my hair will change based on humidity. The temperature is currently 45 degrees F and the only thing my hair will be doing is freezing in place.

Happy last day of September! Love, Western New York.

Little Meg breaches the space-time continuum

2009-09-22T20:18:00.004-04:00

I've been having these strange moments lately where I'll suddenly be transported back into childhood, and for a moment I'm confused about exactly where in time I am. Sometimes I'll glance up at myself in the mirrored closet doors in my room and see myself in sixth-grade form--face rounder, white-blond hair painfully taut and pulled back into that eternal ponytail. It's a little bit surreal, and slightly terrifying (as most things involving the middle school experience tend to be). Perhaps I've been reverting into the self-conscious, worrisome little person I was then, lately. Maybe?

I had another moment like that earlier this afternoon; I woke up from a nap around six o'clock and the dim light from the window reminded me of one afternoon when I was little . . . I had fallen asleep on a loveseat in the living room and woke up just as the sky became dark. My mom was making dinner in the kitchen and something about the faint light of the room, the smell and the sounds of utensils and drawers opening and closing just stuck with me. I always think it's strange which moments we remember most vividly--for me, it's hardly the ones in which something momentous or dramatic occurs, but little everyday things pieced together in this nonsensical way. When I opened my eyes this afternoon I was convinced that if I shuffled into the kitchen, eyes half-closed, my mom would be standing over the stove. If I looked into the mirror, I would be twelve years old.

Things I hate:

2009-09-21T19:26:00.001-04:00

Being called ma'am. Julie agrees.

Mule friends

2009-09-14T22:04:00.003-04:00

I realized I never posted any pictures from Ireland, so here's one that always makes me smile:

On the long walk in Doolin that ended in the electric fence, Lauren and I came across four friendly mules that I now think about sometimes in the way you'd think about someone you had a chance encounter with. My musings are somewhat less varied and more predictable than they would be if the little dudes had been human: is it raining on them? Are they eating grass? Do they remember me?

I'd like to think that they do.

Whining and kid-watching

2009-09-14T21:30:00.003-04:00

I'm not sure how I feel about this year thus far. Although I am still only a junior, I find myself in this near-constant state of terror at the hands of a leering beast called Life After Undergrad. I haven't missed high school since I've been here, but all of a sudden I'm yearning for the four year safety net that college provides.

I guess this sense of being on the verge has permeated into other aspects of life; insecurity abounds and I feel like I don't have confidence in anything I'm doing. It's a feeling I'd like to shake. Sigh.

Despite my whining, there are things to love about being a junior and living off-campus. There is a Chinese take-out restaurant across the street called Main Moon, and the owners' children always play outside on the sidewalk. Yesterday afternoon, I was sitting at the kitchen table doing work when I heard concurrent shouting and a car alarm. The kids, a girl about twelve and a boy about five, were taking turns running to an SUV parked on the street and hitting it to make the alarm go off. The car started shrieking, the children started shrieking, the car would stop and they would do it again. The game went on for about twenty minutes and I laughed every time. Admittedly, this wasn't the first time I watched the Main Moon kids play--I peek out the window whenever I hear them. Creepy? Probably, but it's one of my favorite parts of the day. That and the showering without shoes thing.

A dumb idea

2009-09-09T18:39:00.003-04:00

I started looking at graduate school information online today. Why did I do that? It's not like growing up is real or anything.

Post-travel knots

2009-08-13T20:15:00.007-04:00

I'm trying to organize my thoughts into some form coherent enough to pass as a travel essay, but it isn't working very well. Problem one: the more I re-acclimate to life at home, the more nostalgia I feel for Ireland and the less I remember the frustrations I felt while there. Related to that is problem two: as distance increases, I know that the truth of whatever I write will decrease . . . which I suppose is the case for most recollections. Point being, I need to write quickly if I want to avoid a flowery tale of fluffy sheep, fluffy clouds and fluffy Irish folk.

A wave of said nostalgia hit an hour earlier when, instead of the whole milk I've been given in cafes (three years later, I still don't know how to type an accent on this keyboard) for the past few weeks, I made my tea with skim milk from the fridge. It's an unwelcome adjustment. In Ireland, the choice was between low-fat milk and full-fat milk . . . skim wasn't an option. As such, my tea was always wonderfully creamy and delicious. My favorite place in Ireland to sit, drink tea and write was at a cafe called Grappa on the river in Sligo--for a Euro fifty I could get a pot of tea and a table by the window. One wall was covered in wallpaper with maroon lilies on it, and the glass dessert case positioned against said wall never had anything in it more tempting than the croissants and scones at the tall counter. The sugar came in tubes rather than packets, and I always took a handful with me to make tea back at the townhouse.

Okay, enough of that. Time for work . . . with some Irish folk music in the background.

A shocking weekend

2009-08-04T06:39:00.002-04:00

I've learned not to have expectations on this trip. The ability to float and adapt is one essential to maintaining some semblance of sanity, and our weekend trip totally required that. The plan was to be picked up at the Yeats Village (the townhouses where we're staying) at 10 AM on Saturday morning, at which point Rachel and Rob would already be on the bus. From there, we'd travel south to Galway and stay for the afternoon before getting back on the bus and heading to Doolin, where we'd stay for the next two nights and visit the Aran Islands and the Cliffs of Moher.

I blame every frustration on the bus driver.

He arrived at 9.30 (time is denoted with a period instead of a colon here) and stood outside waiting as we threw things in our backpacks, scrambling because of the lost half-hour. We then discovered that he hadn't gone to the Sligo City Hotel to get R & R so after we all made it on the bus we went into town to pick them up. Long story short, he drove right past Galway and nobody noticed until we were hours out of the way. After a seven hour bus ride, we finally arrived in Doolin--a tiny town filled with bed & breakfasts on the edge of a giant cliff. Cows and sheep abound, and there is a kind of intimidating beauty about the bleakness of it all.

What I really want to tell you about is the walk that Lauren and I went on one afternoon. It wasn't raining but the clouds rolled by, grey and threatening but staggering and beautiful at the same time. It felt like the edge of the world. We decided to go walking towards the cliffs, turning down a gravel road lined with little homes that were eventually replaced by small fields, gridded by stone walls and thick brambles. We found a lane between the fields that began with tire tracks but narrowed to a single path. The entire time we walked I expected to suddenly come to a giant cliff and have the Atlantic in my hands but the path just became muddier and more difficult to traverse in our sneakers. I climbed a horse gate into a pasture, and we walked along the stone perimeter looking for a good place to jump the low wall towards the cliff. Brambles and barbed wire lined the stone, but eventually I found a place that was fairly free of obstruction--there was barbed wire on one side of the stone and a thin, solid wire on the other, but they looked easy enough to get over. I was able to raise my leg over the barbed wire and get over the wall quickly as the stones clacked and loosened under my weight. Then I was standing with my back to the barbed wire and stone and in front of me was only the single, solid, unassuming wire. I grabbed it, pulling it towards my body in order th step over it and threw myself back against the stone as my body rejected the wire or the wire rejected my body--it took a few moments before I realized what had happened. It was an electric fence. I stood there, chest heaving but not about to cry, as Lauren kept trying to ask me what had happened.

It was only scary for a moment. It was clear that we wouldn't be making it to the cliffs that day but by the time we found our way back to the muddy path it was something to joke about. When people ask me about my trip to Ireland, I'll be able to tell them I got electrocuted at the edge of the earth.

Rene's

2009-07-31T08:40:00.003-04:00

One of my favorite places in Sligo is a little cafe at the bottom of a hill near the Hawk's Well Theatre (where we go for lectures every morning). It's called Rene's, and it's owned by a French native named Emmanuel who moved to Ireland six years ago and has been in Sligo for the last two. Ireland's west coast has a pretty big surf scene and Emmanuel is a surfer, so the inside of this cafe has surfboards on the walls and is painted in blues and greens. There is one picture hanging on the wall of a grassy cliff with sheep grazing in the foreground, while in the background a surfer is riding a huge wave--it looks like one picture superimposed onto another. Lauren and I went there this morning before class and talked to him for about an hour about living in Sligo and the differences between countries, be it Ireland and France or Ireland and the United States, and it was really interesting. He speaks English with an Irish accent, but his French also comes through when he talks so sometimes he's a little bit difficult to understand . . . although I think he feels the same about me and my rapid-fire mumbly American English. Rene's specialties are coffee and huge bowls of pasta, so after the lecture we went back for lunch. Emmanuel told us he'd like to one day go back to France, but that it's extremely difficult not having money there because there is so much affluence around you at all times that it makes life harder as you scrape to pay rent and, in his case, raise a family. I loved getting the chance to talk to someone familiar with Ireland that could still look at it objectively, realizing the pros and cons about different policies and cultural norms. He told us he has thoughts of going back to France once he establishes himself financially, but likes the laid-back way in which the Irish see a lot of things. Rene's is becoming part of the morning routine and I'm glad I found somewhere to happily part with my Euros.

Stories from Sligo

2009-07-28T10:20:00.004-04:00

Arrived in Sligo on Sunday afternoon on the smallest plane I have ever flown on. As I've already bragged, I packed extremely lightly but as a group we were several kilos over the limit and had to pay extra for our luggage . . . which was terribly disconcerting as we walked out onto the tarmac towards our tiny, propeller-bearing, Wright Brothers-recreation aircraft. I tried to sound out Irish vowels for about five minutes until the plane started rockin' and rollin' in the air and I had to close my eyes. The descent into Sligo was the worst bit--we circled the Atlantic and came back in at a pretty steep angle and from my seat in the front row, it looked as if we were about to nose dive straight ito it. I tried to rationalize the worst case scenario in my head, thinking that we'd all just inflate the life vests under our seats, swim the hundred meters to shore and have Buddha-like revelations as we realize the triviality of material things and the perils of packing too much. But we landed safely and were greeted by a handsome Irish lad who drove us to the Yeats Village in a coach bus while it rained, like it has every day since we've been here.

This is the second day of the Yeats School; there are about two hundred students of varying ages and levels of education. During the opening convocation I sat next to a reverend professor from Saskatchewan who's been coming to the school for the past twelve years and later, I talked to a 65-year-old Irish woman living in Liverpool who came here for the first time because she's always loved Yeats and wanted a new experience. Among the students in my fifteen person afternoon seminar are PhD candidates, published Yeats authors (including my professor) and a headmaster from a private school for boys in Virginia. This certain headmaster was told by our professor, Warwick Gould (who, surprisingly, is not a character from Harry Potter) from Oxford, that he could not read poetry correctly: "How do I say this without sounding critical? Well, I can't." Part of me felt really sorry for him, but I kept thinking about how much money his students would pay to see their headmaster given the what's-what by a Yeats scholar. Probably a lot. Unsurprisingly, when Dr. Gould asked someone to volunteer to read the next poem, nobody raised their hand. Unfortunately, he made eye contact with me and I was the lucky gal . . . but, not to be a braggy pants, there was no criticism of my reading. Bahahahh.

Last night Seamus Heaney gave a poetry reading to a full house and there was a reception afterwards at a restaurant in town. He's turning seventy this year and had a stroke recently, but he's still witty and sharp and his poetry is dead-on. At the reception, Dr. Doggett took me to go talk to him (although neither of us quite knew what to say to him) but he left before we could get close enough. Instead, we talked with the program director, who introduced me to his wife. I was terrified the entire time, mostly because she wasn't wearing a name tag and I couldn't remember her first name. I get the feeling that I'll be practicing the art of small talk a lot while I'm here. Main goal: forcing myself to remember names upon introductions.

Yesterday I learned that Sligo has a terrible sense of ironic humor: on break between lectures and class, I found a thrift store on a side street that had a lot of great stuff. I bought two dresses (one of which I wore to the reading last night), a jacket, a pocket Irish dictionary, a scarf and a wool sweater with the Normal School of Sligo's crest embroidered on the left chest for €21.50. Before pulling the sweater over my head to try it on, I took my glasses off and placed them on a shelf. Twenty minutes after walking out with my purchases, I realized I'd left them in the store and ran back to retrieve them. They'd already been stolen. I was frustrated and upset with myself, especially when the woman working at the desk asked for a phone contact if someone returned them or if they were found and I couldn't give her anything but my name. So the irony of the situation? The sign above the door of this thrift shop reads Charity Shop to Support Ireland's Blind. Funny, Sligo. Real funny.

Despite my stupidity in leaving my glasses, things are good in Sligo. Although the pace here is much less exhausting than in Dublin, it's certainly grittier than home. For me, traveling thus far has been trying to strike that delicate balance between exposing yourself to everything unfamiliar while still keeping a wary sensibility. The scales tipped a little bit in the wrong direction yesterday, but I'm still safe and feeling comfortable with my surroundings. Lesson for my next travel experience: wear croakies.

Learning Irish

2009-07-25T03:40:00.003-04:00

We've toured quite a few museums in the last two days and have a few more on the itenerary today, and wherever captions accompany a painting or an exhibit it is posted in English and in Irish (or Gaelic, but most here refer to it as the former). While I've heard many a brogue, though, I haven't once heard Irish spoken. Part of it is because Dublin seems to be comprised wholly of tourists (save for the two cabbies I've spoken to) and it's also because nobody speaks the language anymore. I asked Kelly, a friend on the trip whose father immigrated from Ireland, who actually spoke Irish and she told me that there are parts of the deep country where Irish is the primary language and nobody speaks English. That was heartening, but I still felt this sort of sadness for the valiant effort the country makes to keep this dying language alive and current. The cab driver last night told Rachel and Rob (my professors), Jake and I that learning Irish is now the equivalent of learning a second language in school--the way we learn Spanish or French or Italian. After grade school, it's largely forgotten save a few phrases.

Anyways, I feel this responsibility to make an effort. Ireland has extended itself to me and, in turn, I want to hold up my end of the deal. Yesterday I was just wandering around when we had a few spare hours before dinner and the ceile (pronounced kay-lee) we went to for Irish dancing and music, and found this international bookstore where I bought a book on Irish and an accompanying CD with pronounciations and everything. I'm not saying my goal is fluency or anything, but without getting all "MY PEOPLE!" on anyone, there is the thought that this is where my family is from. They probably spoke Irish at one time, and I think that's a pretty cool thing. History feels more important and more real in a place that's so old (I touched an 800-year-old mummy's hand yesterday at Saint Michan's Church).

There is so much I want to write about but there is only so much time before we have to meet to start another day. Hopefully tonight I'll be able to get back onto here and convey at least some of it, but if not, tomorrow we're flying to the west coast to move into the apartments and kick off the two weeks of the Yeats school. Touring Dublin has been amazing, but I'm looking forward to a sense of relative normalcy for a little while.

A very long Dublin day

2009-07-23T15:49:00.002-04:00

I have been awake for about thirty-six hours straight. My first day in Dublin is quickly coming to a close and I have neither the time nor energy to write about it now, but suffice to say that it is pretty damn amazing. The history is undeniable--their national beer is older than our Constitution. Anyways, tomorrow brings us to Christ Church Cathedral and Saint Andrews, along with a trip on the DART out to see traditional Irish dance, along with music and storytelling. Perhaps I'll be back on tomorrow morning when I can keep my eyes open and the queuing line behind me for Internet use at bay.

I will arise and go now, and go to Innisfree

2009-07-21T15:21:00.002-04:00

While the past two months may not have been documented on Stringless Kite, they happened. I packed up my sophomore year at Geneseo, left most of it in the basement at 310 Tyler in Miller Place, and resumed life on the Island with my family working at East End and thinking, a lot of the time, about another island on the opposite side of the Atlantic. Dramatic recap aside, this is the eve of my first adventure abroad and I guess it's fitting that I'm headed back to the motherland to pass this travel threshold that I sincerely hope will be the first of many trips abroad. While I'll be updating this from Sligo's internet cafes, I won't be bringing my phone or laptop. I am not worried in the least about this--rather, I'm glad that I won't be worrying about having to stay connected. I'm only truly worried about two things:

My impressively small bag (which is too small to qualify as a suitcase, I think) that I was so proud to stuff all my things inside does not take into account the things I'll likely be bringing back with me. So while I will be totally smug tomorrow morning when other people lug giant body bags onto the shuttle bus to the airport and I can lift my bag with a pinkie, I'm not sure I'll be having the last laugh when I can't fit my knitted sweater and the Blarney stone in with my belongings.
The Irish will not let me into their country based on the sheer repulsiveness of my passport photo. I know that everyone believes their identification photos to be less than flattering, but I'm totally serious. Point in case: when I showed John my passport (which goes to show how much I trust him), he responded by saying something along the lines of, "Well, I'm glad I won't have to worry about Irish security at the airport."

These, though, are minor concerns. I think I can deal.

My classmates and I will be primarily at the Yeats International Summer School in Sligo, a town on the northwest coast of Ireland. We'll be studying W.B. Yeats, a pretty fantastic poet who grew up in Sligo and dedicated his life to his country through his poetic, dramatic and political work. Tomorrow we're flying into Kennedy, where we'll transfer to an Aer Lingus flight bound for Dublin. After three days there, we'll begin our first week at the Yeats school, at which point I'll be able to get on here again. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have a pond to cross.

Note to self:

2009-05-17T01:14:00.004-04:00

Do not fall asleep on the couch while Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is on in the background unless you'd like to have terrifying nightmares about psychologically deranged children who kill people with safety pins.

I'm going back to bed. There is a thunderstorm outside. Between that and the fact that I'm awake right now, the second day of "wake up really early and go running" may be a rainout. Oh darn. Goodnight.

The view from the couch

2009-05-11T16:56:00.004-04:00

Julie, John and I were sitting on the couches in Muddy Waters earlier (I'm still here, they left) when we began to notice a man sitting nearby look up to watch us every few minutes while drawing in a sketch pad . . . turns out he was drawing Julie and I as anime characters. He didn't show us the work in progress; instead, Julie walked behind him to check while getting coffee. After a few hours of drawing, he just got up and left. I regret not getting to see myself in cartoon form. Sigh.

I'm still sitting in the same spot as I was when I got here at ten o'clock, but now my professor for Irish literature is sitting on a chair across from me reading term papers. I don't want to look up, but I really want to know if he's reading the one I turned in this morning. The suspense is killing me.

Alright. Back to work. I'm wrapping up the third of five two-page essays on economic inequality for tomorrow. When I finish the fourth, I get another coffee break. Type, type, type. Good thing this couch is comfortable.

Things I have recently learned

2009-05-09T18:51:00.004-04:00

Leaving my computer next to an open window and leaving for several hours when there is even a slight chance of rain in the forecast is a terrible idea
Sneakers are the most sensible type of footwear to wear to a folk punk concert (and RecSpecs are the most sensible type of eyewear)
Regardless of what sort of personal deadlines I set for myself, I cannot summon peak productivity until real deadlines are fast approaching
Size stickers are to be left on Fitted caps
While going out on a limb to take a class outside my major may sound like a good idea during registration, sitting through the class all semester is not worth broadening my horizons

. . . to be continued.

A trend I'm beginning to notice with increasing frequency around campus:

2009-05-04T15:20:00.000-04:00

Yawning. Must be finals time!

Goings on about town

2009-04-27T18:03:00.004-04:00

To continue with the finding of correlations from last post, the lack of recent posts has been directly correlated to the weather. Apparently spring has been dropped from the traditional progression of seasons because the town of Geneseo went directly from winter to summer. Today hit 89 degrees and I am very confused. The weather makes for excellent porch lounging and evening strolls about town, but the timing is less than conducive for getting work done, especially since it isn't late enough in the season for the library to turn on the air conditioner. Instead, I walk around with my backpack as a literal weight upon my shoulders and perpetually feel the need to shower.

Thursday, I helped judge a peace poetry contest for children in grades K-8. My team of three was delegated to the grades 6-8 category and it was completely entertaining. Looking at the submissions brought back the old humiliation of using riduculous fonts and rainbow-blended WordArt for sixth-grade assignments in Mrs. Camillery's class. Oh, the awkwardness of middle school. Anyways, my favorite poem of the bunch was what I believed to be accidental genius--this one kid's submission was a single line, typed in Courier New at the very top of a ripped piece of paper with his name scrawled in pencil on the back:

peace to me, is like falling asleep fading into a dream, from counting all those sheep

Wonderful, right? I scrawled it down on a corner of the Lamron so I wouldn't forget. As for the rest of the submissions . . . peace was compared to a banana, soccer, and a huge ice cream sundae (among other things). Hilarious. I refuse to acknowledge that I was ever that age.

There are officially sixteen days left in the semester. There are many, many pages to be written between now and then that I am presently ignoring to the best of my ability. Leaving for the summer will be strange, but I'm already looking forward to coming back in the fall and moving into the idyllic apartment . . . after an Irish adventure, of course. I don't know if it's the rapid changing of seasons, but things are moving really fast all of a sudden. It's an exhilarating thing, assuming I survive it all. Maybe I'll start counting sheep or something.

Sleep/productivity correlation: found

2009-04-16T14:29:00.005-04:00

I tracked the moon's progress in the sky all night instead of sleeping; I kept having really bizarre dreams and couldn't stop thinking about things. Surprisingly, it meant I got a lot of stuff done today because I was out and about before eight . . . apparently the key to productivity is a terrible night's rest. Who knew?

I am running on so much coffee right now. I can't remember the last time I felt a caffeine buzz, but I do now. That makes me sound like an addict. Hm.

Sometimes I forget deadlines and spam the department

2009-04-14T01:08:00.004-04:00

Tonight during English Club we finalized the accepted content for the year's literary magazine. I didn't really expect that the one piece I submitted two minutes before the deadline would get in, but lo and behold! It did. During discussion for my piece (submissions are blind, so nobody knew who the writers were), a friend said it was a social commentary or something like that and it struck me as funny . . . it's really just a laundry list of things that give me the same feeling of discomforting embarrassment as a person I used to know. The discrepancy between a reader's perspective and a writer's intent (or lack thereof) continues to amuse me.

Note to self: be more organized with submission deadlines come next February.

In other English Club news, I made flyers for the tee shirt fundraiser to hang around Welles tomorrow. The design:

simile is like awesome

It says 'Geneseo English' underneath that, and the money goes towards producing the magazine. Anyways, after making the flyers I typed up an email to send to the majors and minors in the department about the sale . . . unfortunately, I forgot that I was logged into my personal email account instead of English Club's, so I ended up sending two identical emails to the listserv--one from my account, and one from the club. My bad.

What exactly do April flurries bring?

2009-04-06T23:56:00.002-04:00

Prior worries about the state of the Jesus sandals have been rendered unnecessary for the moment because IT IS SNOWING. Yes, it is indeed the 6th of April. Yes, it was almost sixty degrees a day ago. Yes, the floor is still cluttered with flip flops I've been wearing for the past two weeks.

Anyways, I guess the daisies on my desk will have to serve as an ironic symbol in the midst of this freaky and unwelcome weather rather than reflecting the appropriate season. In the meantime, both myself and the kites I bought the other day will have to wait patiently for a warm breeze.

A pre-Easter resurrection

2009-03-26T11:02:00.002-04:00

I'm happy to say that the season with a reason has begun and the Jesus sandals are back in action. For those of you that haven't met (or smelled) them, they are a pair of leather sandals I've been wearing for about three years. At the moment they are being held together with duct tape that needs to be replaced; the bottoms of my feet are tacky with residual glue from tape that's fallen off. Anyways, my mother has been trying to get rid of them for quite a while but as Biblical history has already shown, the Jesus sandals will always resurrect themselves. I don't think I need to explain the name--suffice it to say that one may very well have worn them while walking down the road to Damascus.

Other than that, I'm just bracing myself for a busy few weeks . . . registration begins soon and I have to decide which classes to take next semester and which class to take this summer at Stony Brook. It's all quite exciting until I remember the work that comes along with it.

Ha ha happy Tuesday

2009-03-24T15:15:00.003-04:00

I'm glad that my protestations that productivity will certainly increase when the weather gets warmer are true: the weather is beautiful and I have gotten so much work done today! Things are good.

I read the entirety of Roddy Doyle's Paddy Clarke Ha Ha Ha in about two days; I finished it this morning. It was the first time in a while that I felt emotionally invested in a book and it was wonderful. Whenever I read something really good, I'll find that my thoughts are narrated in the same tone as the book for a few days--longevity usually indicating how much I loved it. Right now everything is still tinged with the observational quality of a ten-year-old boy. Regardless, I can say with confidence that I still don't find poop jokes funny--the book was really good, but not that good.

Don't ever change

2009-03-17T03:23:00.007-04:00

Whenever I come home now, I feel like it's an exercise in either archiving or uncovering. Sometimes I'll be struck with the grand idea of blazing a trail through my closet or the boxes under my bed with the intent of cleaning and organizing and throwing away, and on other occasions all I want to do is just flip through old notebooks or photo albums.

This is a digging week; I've already found my sixth and ninth grade yearbooks and spent the past few hours leafing through them. What I find most amusing is the fact that nobody ever writes anything substantial to one another--maybe it's because in each of these books, everyone knows they'll see each other again in a too-short two months--but nine times out of ten the notes from classmates have something to do with the teacher picked on most during the school year. My sixth grade French teacher was referred to as Martian, the Thing from Mars, and You-Know-Who by several different classmates. The worst part is that this teacher signed the same pages serving as her burn book . . . .we were terrible!

I think my favorite entry in the sixth grade yearbook is from a girl named Jenny that I haven't talked to in at least eight years:

Meghan-
Have a great summer hope you have a great time with your grandparents without your sister for a week.
Your friend,
*Jenny*

It all gets summed up pretty succinctly by Amy on the last page:

Queen of Ugabuga. Haha. Now everyone thinks I'm nuts. Oh well, I am.

The to-do list: spring break edition

2009-03-13T10:00:00.003-04:00

Sing loudly in the shower with bare feet
Sit at the beach with a cup of coffee and one of several Irish Lit books I need to catch up on
Eat pie . . . pizza pie, that is
Register for a summer class at Stony Brook
Find my camera charger
Sing Hey, Jude with Keira in the car with the windows down
Vacillate between extremes in an attempt to catch up on my love/hate relationship with Ginny
Drink chai with CiCi
Find something to write about for my next creative nonfiction draft
Speak in tongues: get cawfee with my dawgs, etc. etc.
Be disproportionately thrilled about a week of fifty degree weather

Going down that road feelin' bad

2009-03-05T18:40:00.006-05:00

So yesterday I woke up feeling as if someone had taken a sledgehammer to the back of my neck and rather than wearing off as the day went on, it got worse. Anyways, by the end of the day I was convinced I was on my deathbed and sent an email to my professor about the midterm assignment due Friday at midnight. I told him I fully intended to have the midterm in by the deadline but wanted to let him know that I was not feeling well and didn't really know what to expect in the next few days.

His response:

Hi Meghan, I do hope you feel better soon, if you feel
very bad you should go to health services.

I would throw back my head and laugh if it didn't involve the necessary range of motion.

Side note: the post title is a Woody Guthrie song; they were playing some of his recordings in Muddy Waters yesterday and I had a pang of nostalgia for Kimball's class. Oh, morning singalongs and endearing old gentlemen with musical genius . . . I miss you.

Overheard in Milne Library

2009-02-27T11:22:00.002-05:00

"Dude, I've been sober this whole week just to keep up with my grades."

Skivvy scam

2009-02-27T09:41:00.003-05:00

I was checking my email this morning and opened one from Express with the subject line: Free panty--three days only! Am I one to turn down something free? Absolutely not. So I go to the website, punch in the promotion code and go to the online checkout to get my $7.50 unmentionables fo' free. But wait! Shipping and handling costs $8. Psh. Rule of thumb: if it sounds too good to be true, then it is.

When you're here, you're God's family

2009-02-22T13:17:00.006-05:00

Disaster has struck! For the past few months, there has been ongoing construction at a site in Geneseo that I heard was going to become an Olive Garden--exciting news for our little Podunk town. Lately the building has started to take shape; the roof arched the same way as every other chain restaurant and it looked like an Olive Garden until a steeple appeared on the roof. IT'S GOING TO BE A CHURCH. I know the whole transubstantiation deal means endless body and blood of Christ, but I was really looking forward to the endless salad and breadsticks.

Katy and I decided that we're going to keep knocking the steeple off the roof until they relent and give us our Olive Garden. Anyone looking to join the cause?

Monday, enough said

2009-02-16T12:40:00.003-05:00

I feel like if I simply vomited on a few sheets of paper it would be roughly comparable to the creative nonfiction draft I'm trying to finish up. I hate when I hate what I'm writing. Ughhhh.

In unrelated news, my cousin and sister are coming to visit tomorrow. Yay! This means that my draft will necessarily be finished and my room will necessarily be clean by tomorrow morning, and there is some comfort in that . . . if I don't think about the time from now until that point. Blind productivity, that's how I roll.

Travel blog: step one

2009-02-09T18:37:00.001-05:00

My deposit for Ireland has been handed over. Eeeeeek!!

Tool in the glasses, this is for you

2009-01-27T14:48:00.007-05:00

Dear Loudmouth Kid in Muddy Waters,

Congratulations! You have officially made the notorious list of people that annoy me. Notice that everyone around you is speaking in a normal, conversational tone while you project across the coffee shop. I'm not sure if you're trying to impress the girl sitting across from you or if you interact with everyone like a big tool, but between your hearty guffaws and the flailing of your arms I can not get any work done. If I wasn't enjoying my cappuccino so much, I would pour it on your head.

I will give you thanks for this, though: hearing you throw around profanity makes me never want to use it ever again. If you want to do a real service to the community, though, just put down the caffeinated beverage and stop speaking.

Love,
Meg

Days, days, days

2009-01-27T09:30:00.003-05:00

So I woke up this morning as Katy was getting ready for class and we both took care of the calendars because it's become quite a task each day. Last year, I had a "word of the day" tear-away calendar and in November, I was in a store on Main Street and bought one called "Forgotten English" for 2009 to replace the Merriam-Webster one. Then, for my birthday in December, Katy gave me an Urban Dictionary tear-away calendar and Margaret gave me a "daily origami" calendar. That makes three calendars. Then, when I returned to school last week, my trusty Merriam-Webster calendar had been resurrected on the windowsill--Katy's mom had seen it in some store and got it for me. So there are now four tear-away calendars in our room and I have to allot a good ten minutes to adjust them all. Next semester we'll be able to disperse them throughout the apartment--Forgotten English in the kitchen, Urban Dictionary in the bathroom, etc.--but for now, they are a commanding force on the windowsill, a paper collection of days.

What are the words of the day, you want to know?

Forgotten English says gizzen, to grin audibly.
Merriam-Webster says groundling, a spectator who stood in the pit of an Elizabethan theater, or a person of unsophisticated taste.
Urban Dictionary says pornfolio, the mass of porn that one has stored on their computer, generally in a separate folder.

I also constructed a Baby Penguin a la Origami Fold-a-Day. Precious.

I'll give you an edit or two

2009-01-16T04:39:00.004-05:00

Call me Snoopy

2009-01-12T21:41:00.003-05:00

My dad is trying to sell his old car and asked me to post an ad on craigslist for him; I did so and then started exploring the website, which I'd never visited before.

Two hours later, I am completely hooked on the "missed connections" and "strictly platonic" subcategories of the website . . . while quite a few posts end up being a bit off-color, the majority are so interesting to read: for example, the 21-year-old looking for a Scrabble partner and the Asian DDR player with a guilty conscience. Most come off as extremely lonely-sounding, yet while many of the posters admit the probable futility of their search there is some element of hope to each one that I just love.

I already have a collection of websites I've found like this bookmarked under the subcategory "People," including:

Stuff That's Left Behind, a community blog about the objects remaining after a relationship has ended. I couldn't link it directly, but scroll down a bit to the monster stuffed animal post . . . it's probably my favorite from that site.
OneSentence, a site where people post a story about themselves in a single sentence. Some are better than others, but the ones that are good are usually really good.
Overheard In New York, which I've probably told you about if you don't already know what it is.
Write In My Journal, a blog composed by a guy who encounters random people and asks them to write something about themselves in a journal he keeps with him.

So yeah, I like to snoop around the lives of people I don't know. Now you will, too, perhaps?

This is what happens when I leave the house

2009-01-06T12:28:00.003-05:00

So after an almost entirely hermit-like existence for a good week or so, I dressed in something other than sweatpants yesterday morning and left my house. I had to work at noon, so before that I planned on running errands--one of which was a trip to Michaels to pick up more yarn. My latest crocheting project has caused me to clean out the one in Rocky Point, so I have been forced to get more at one further away. Anyways, after buying four more skeins at Michaels I ventured towards Port Jefferson and decided to stop at the thrift store on the way there. The store opened at 11 and it was ten minutes before that when I pulled into the parking lot, so I began balling a skein of yarn while waiting for it to open. 11 o'clock comes and goes, and I decide that I'll just finish the ball of yarn before going in. As I'm winding yarn, I look around and notice a big red Jeep parked across from me; it seemed like it was creeping closer towards me but largely disregarded it. A few moments later I looked back at it and saw that it was definitely moving towards me--the car was rolling backwards straight towards the hood of my car. So I threw the pile of yarn off my lap and started the car, then scooted out of the way as quickly as I could. I ran into the thrift store after that and told some guy working at the register, who announced the runaway car over the PA.

All I can say is THANK GOODNESS I was in no rush to get into the store because if I hadn't been sitting in my car, I would've had quite the surprise upon seeing it crunched.

Let "real" break commence

2009-01-02T13:52:00.006-05:00

So the holidays are officially over and I honestly couldn't be gladder . . . I feel like now is the real beginning of vacation. The only bad thing about having my schedule cleared entirely is that I now have no excuse not to get working on the projects that need to be finished before I go back to Genny, i.e. the dramatic monologues. I think I'll start it . . . tomorrow. Today is dedicated to the excavation of the record collection in the basement and a trip to Michaels for more yarn. Maybe a trip to Starbucks thrown in there, too.

I have yet to make any resolutions for the new year, but I think that making a concerted effort to actually do the work in front of me rather than just think about doing it is a pretty good start.

Caroling, caroling through the slush

2008-12-24T11:21:00.002-05:00

One would think I'd have more time to blog now that the semester is finished, but obviously this is not the case. I've been working at the store for the past few days and when I haven't been doing that it's been family Christmas parties and last-minute shopping . . . the holidays are exhausting.

The good news is that all of my wrapping is finished, I'm not working today or tomorrow, and Christmas music will be off the radio in two days. One slight snag is that my mom got Keira a Christmas mix for tomorrow morning. . . she's been asking for it and I fear that it will prolong the season until there are leaves on the Chinese maple in our front yard again. Sigh. For now, though, it's Christmas Eve and I know I'll be singing a few carols with relish along with Erin and Keira before going back to grumbling about them on the 26th.

Oh, and the snow is melting just in time for the holiday. Who planned that one, hm?

Making lists

2008-12-18T02:08:00.003-05:00

Winter break is the perfect excuse to curl up with tea and a book, and I intend to take full advantage of this fact. Tomorrow (er, today?) my plan is to get up far earlier than 12:30 in the afternoon and head to the library to stock up for the month. There are so many books that I feel like I should've already read after twenty years on the planet . . . it's never too late to attempt to catch up, I guess.

Sweet Jesus, twenty is a big number. I'm still wrapping my head around that.

Anyways, I have two lists in the works:

The Book List

The Handmaid's Tale
Catch-22
Lolita
On The Road
The Satanic Verses
The Stranger
Faust
One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest

The Music List

Leonard Cohen
Belle & Sebastian
Bob Dylan
Paul Robeson
Pete Seeger
Wilco
Destroyer
Jenny Lewis & the Watson Twins
Joan Baez
Odetta

So that's tomorrow. Any suggestions?

Oh, and as far as tea goes . . . before leaving Geneseo I picked up a box of Yogi Tea's Chai Redbush to try and it is my new favorite. Wegmans and Wild By Nature carry it . . . just add a little bit of honey. Or better yet, come to my house and I will share a cup with you.

Also, I'm glad you got a chuckle out of my Monday morning mental lapse. I'm laughing about it, too. Heh heh.

You know it's STILL finals week when . . .

2008-12-15T23:08:00.003-05:00

. . . despite going to sleep at eleven o'clock the night before, you wake up five minutes after your eight o'clock exam is scheduled to begin and literally stumble out of the room still wearing the same tie-dyed sweatshirt you wore and slept in the day before with a pair of red sweatpants and male moccasins without socks. You are sweating by the time you charge up the hill and burst into the classroom in a flurry of fleece and puffy hair, but make it to your seat just as the first song identification is being played.

Right around the fourth song out of ten, you realize that you are still wearing your disgusting retainers. Awesome.

You know it's finals week when . . .

2008-12-14T15:08:00.005-05:00

. . . while sitting in the library downloading the music for tomorrow's last Woody Guthrie quiz, you realize that you've neglected to put a bra on underneath the shirt you slept in the night before and hide under the tie-dyed tent of a sweatshirt you are wearing.

Fitzwilliam Darcy became a fan of Fine Eyes

2008-12-10T17:30:00.001-05:00

An early holiday gift for all you Facebook addicts/Jane Austen enthusiasts . . .

Finals, I will kick your collective butt

2008-12-10T17:21:00.003-05:00

I changed my mind, I will totally relish these last six days despite the finals that will either make or break this semester. I woke up to an email from my humanities professor with my latest paper grade attached . . . despite convincing myself that I'd certainly gotten no higher than a C, I aced it and could only laugh. So now it's time for a clean sweep of these crazy classes because when I'm sitting across from my grandfather at dinner on Christmas Eve and he asks me about my grades, I am determined to both shock and delight the crowd with my results and that's all I have to say about that!

Finals week lament

2008-12-09T10:10:00.001-05:00

I want to go home so badly. Seven more days . . .

A photo collage with a subtle theme

2008-12-07T13:15:00.005-05:00

Hooooo-boy!

2008-12-04T20:08:00.007-05:00

Alright, this is it . . . I'm working on my last paper of the semester, which is due tomorrow morning in my Woody Guthrie class. As I told John earlier, the only thought keeping me productive is the fact that if I don't finish this paper on hobos, I will likely become one. I'm using hobo songs to talk about their lifestyles and impact on American history and culture; it's honestly really interesting stuff but I am just so darn sick of writing papers. All I can think about is tomorrow at 10:20, at which point I will put down my pencil and do absolutely no work for the entire weekend simply on principle.

This picture was one of the first search results when I did a Google ImageSearch of 'hobo' . . . sorry if it's slightly offensive, but I had to attach it. I laughed for a good minute when I saw it, which may or may not indicate sleep deprivation. Back to banjos and bindles.

Post script: a bindle is that bundle of stuff on the end of a stick that you always associate with hobos. All I can say is that there better be a "HOBO TRIVIA" category when I'm a contestant on Jeopardy! one of these days.

Final stretch

2008-12-01T10:38:00.003-05:00

I just want to live to see my twentieth birthday, which requires hanging on for less than a week. I am only sixteen written pages and a story revision away. It can happen.

The kid sitting at the table next to me in the library may not be as lucky. If he keeps giving his friend a play-by-play recap of last night's World of Warcraft adventure, I may have to slay his sorry self.

Cross THAT off the bucket list

2008-11-25T14:02:00.004-05:00

This morning I got an email from Overheard in New York telling me to keep an eye out for the posting of a submission I sent back in March . . . here it is!

I feel so accomplished.

Pre-holiday anticipation

2008-11-24T13:56:00.005-05:00

I cannot wait to go home. Realistically, most of my time will be spent writing the two fairly substantial papers I still have to do for next week (I finished Shakespeare this morning), but I am so looking forward to spending time with my family. I miss playing board games and singing in the car with Keira and pretending to hate Ginny . . . something tells me I won't absolutely hate working on stuff because I'll be surrounded by the lovely frenzy that is the Pipe household.

I'm also somewhat excited for the legitimate Christmas season (i.e. AFTER Thanksgiving) . . . I realized before that we'll be able to drive around and look at holiday lights up in Geneseo this year because Katy has her car! Cocoa, Christmas music, and admiring the people who waste energy in the most adorable ways. It's the holiday season.

Shakespeare paper-writing stats

2008-11-23T12:07:00.004-05:00

Word count: 62.

Sentence count: 3.

Pages to complete: 9.8.

Cups of coffee consumed: 1.

Hours until due date: 26.5.

I voted for good grammar

2008-11-21T10:20:00.003-05:00

I didn't watch 60 Minutes but I may have to find it on YouTube just to hear the sweet, sweet symphony of sentence structure.

Bard break update

2008-11-19T22:03:00.003-05:00

Macbeth is so fabulously sinister. I can't get over it. Perhaps it's partly due to its length (or lack thereof), but I think it's just so succinct and sharp and yet packed with human conflict and the supernatural . . . I'm gushing, I know. Anyways, I'm in the middle of outlining my term paper for Shakespeare. It is snowing. I am boiling water for the new tea I got at Wegmans . . . chocolate chai, which I expect will either be completely delicious or completely revolting. I'll let you know.

'Tis the season

2008-11-11T20:00:00.007-05:00

One wonderful thing about Christmas products encroaching upon shelves in early November: Keebler's Almond Crescent holiday cookies. I am currently planted in the study room trying to formulate an outline for a humanities paper about the Bible and Dante's Inferno and eating these terribly good cookies. If someone doesn't take the box away from me soon, I will most definitely be condemned to Dante's third circle of Hell with all the gluttons.

So late so soon

2008-11-11T10:51:00.006-05:00

Dr. Seuss: It's night before it's afternoon. December is here before it's June. My goodness how the time has flewn. How did it get so late so soon?

The Genny translation: People were wearing shorts on Friday and the temperature hit 70 degrees. By Monday it was snowing. How did it get so late so soon?!

I dunno if it's the weather or what, but all of a sudden I have at least twenty pages of various term papers due before Thanksgiving and another ten right after break, at which point there will only be one week left of classes before finals begin. Oh, and I will be turning twenty in the midst of it all. I would very much like to shout at the person upstairs orchestrating this cruel fast forwarding and tell him/her to ease off the gas a bit, but my yells would be carried off by the wind that will be here 'til April.

Also, the heinously early advent of the red Starbucks cups is NOT appreciated by their best customer. Can we please acknowledge the fact that it is still autumn?!

No end in sight!

2008-11-06T00:32:00.002-05:00

I have dug myself a nicely sized hole. Copies of my fiction draft are due tomorrow (uhh, today technically); there is an approximate ten-page minimum and I have almost eight written already but the story itself is nowhere near complete and I am already nodding off.

I'm almost considering writing in a meteor crash to end it in the next page.

Down a rabbit hole

2008-11-03T11:12:00.004-05:00

Halloween weekend was totally bizarre, and I blame my choice of costume. While dressed like Alice in Wonderland, I must've fallen down a rabbit hole into some crazy parallel universe . . . a recap:

Halloween itself just turned into a series of unfortunate events. End of story there. Nothing went according to plan and a crummy situation got exacerbated by a lot of bad timing.

So Saturday I volunteered at the haunted house for the last time; there was a cast party afterwards and we took turns trying out this crazy rope swing that you clung onto after jumping off a giant pile of baled hay and went flying across the giant barn. It was terrifying but fantastic. Anyways, one of the actors was taking pictures and after he snapped one of me on the rope swing, he hurried over to me. "Meg," he said, "look at this picture, how weird is that?" For whatever reason, the picture had fogged up. None of the others he took had done so, so I privately started freaking out as my mind began jumping to every horror movie where death is preceded by a warped photograph of the person slated to go. I left shortly after and while I was pulling out of the long, dark, winding driveway, this light flashed through my rearview window out of nowhere at almost the same moment that the pumpkins I'd forgotten about in the trunk slammed against the backseat like a dead body. I drove home down unlit abandoned roads, passing lonely cornfields while continually relocking my doors and scaring myself half to death.

When I woke up Sunday morning and reached for my tear-a-day calendar, the word of the day was scarily indicative of the events that would later pass that day . . . which was creepy. Perhaps the weirdest thing to happen, though, came on Sunday afternoon while Katy and I were sitting in Starbucks doing work. These older ladies were sitting at a table right next to us talking, and after a while I couldn't do anything but listen to them because their conversation basically mirrored my entire life. They talked about a girl named Meghan and threw around the names of my boyfriend, father, and an estranged friend while making comments that were scarily accurate to current situations. Katy and I just eavesdropped, staring at each other wide-eyed until it just got too strange to handle.

I am happy to say, though, that things have come around, normalcy has been restored, and I have never been gladder to wake up and go to class. The moral of the story, boys and girls? Watch where you step. Don't fall down a rabbit hole. Wonderland is a little too weird a place to find yourself.

Our deluxe apartment in the sky

2008-10-30T14:53:00.005-04:00

Since signing a lease with my roommate for an apartment next year, it's been increasingly difficult for the both of us to feel content in our box of a room on campus. Every time we sit cross-legged on the floor to eat lunch picnic-style or wash out our coffee mugs in the bathroom sink, all Katy and I can do is just remind each other about the glowing paradise of a two-bedroom place on Main Street just waiting to envelop us. The latest reminder of why being on campus can be lame arrived just before 1 AM this morning when the fire alarm went off. I had fallen asleep about an hour earlier after taking a shower so my hair was still wet and I was totally disoriented and quite angry . . . we waited outside and froze for fifteen minutes while University Police tried to reset the fire alarm that was triggered after some idiot (upon whose head I now have a bounty) used a fire extinguisher for kicks.

Did I mention that there was snow on the ground when I woke up yesterday morning?

Anyways, this isn't meant to be a total bash of on-campus living because there are some good things . . . namely, the magical robots in the basement otherwise known as washers and dryers. They are brand spankin' new and connect to this website, which you can check to see if machines are open or, if in use, how much longer each cycle will take. I used it this morning after class when I did two weeks' worth of laundry; domesticity has never been more fabulous.

So yeah, I get it, there are pros and cons to everything . . . but my daydreams of late always seem to end with a whistling tea kettle and a kitchen table. Patience, patience.

Hilarious yet hopefully not prophetic:

2008-10-26T09:48:00.003-04:00

Darcy stood me up

2008-10-21T02:40:00.005-04:00

So earlier tonight (well, technically yesterday) I attended an English country dance as part of the Jane Austen class I'm auditing this semester. My professor brought a professional caller in from Rochester along with a violinist and bassist to play little ditties for us to dance to in the college ballroom. With the exception of a few complicated steps resulting in minor collisions and major giggling fits, it really was just like the movies (minus Colin Firth, unfortunately). Some of the dances we learned were pretty sexy; a few steps required holding your gaze with your partner for quite a while and most involved flirtations with men or women other than the person you were paired with. It was far more intriguing than anything we young whippersnappers are shakin' to these days, I'll tell you that. Ninety percent of the class wore everyday clothes, but two of my friends borrowed dresses from Elizabeth Bennett's closet and looked completely fabulous. I didn't have time to get anything together beforehand so instead I took the route of an English country gent for the evening and went to the dance with a lovely lady on each arm. I don't recall Mr. Darcy ever arriving with two dates . . . hah!

Typical Saturday

2008-10-18T19:55:00.003-04:00

Today we had a rehearsal for the Haunted Mansion; after walking around an old, unheated three-story house and giant barn for three hours, I came back to my room, put on a pair of extremely fuzzy socks, and curled up . . .

. . . I just woke up. Finding that the sky is dark when you open your eyes is always confusing, but my toes are so toasty right now I really couldn't care less what time it is. Whenever I find myself feeling guilty for not having been productive, I just remind myself: that's what Sundays are for.

I'm listening . . . er, reading

2008-10-16T11:34:00.004-04:00

I'm becoming a terrible updater, but the good thing is that it is not due to lack of stories. To be honest, I was a little bit taken aback last time I logged in because an anonymous person had commented on a post I'd written after the anti-homosexual protest in a somewhat accusatory way. I didn't quite know what to say because a) my beliefs were challenged, which honestly hasn't ever happened to me before, and b) it was done in a pretty senseless manner. So when I saw it late Thursday night while curled up in my bed at home (I flew there for the long weekend), I just didn't know quite how to react. The conclusion I've come to, though, is that I'm glad my opinions can elicit some sort of reaction from a person I don't even know . . . because isn't that the whole point of putting my ideas out there in the first place?

I guess the point I'm trying to make is that while it's uncomfortable to be told that I'm wrong or that my beliefs or ideas are not shared by everyone else, I like the challenge because it makes me think about the whys hiding behind everything. My hit counter just surpassed a thousand views so I know that someone is reading this--hey, you! Tell me if you disagree with me! Argue (nicely)! Let's question stuff together.

In unrelated news, I am finding it extremely difficult to not pick up every beautiful fiery-colored leaf I see on the ground, as they are in boundless supply. It is a test of my self-control.

The frost has arrived

2008-10-07T10:11:00.004-04:00

This morning on my walk to class I noticed that winter had exhaled her frosty breath across the lawn sometime during the night. It's the first full week of October, for goodness' sake . . . the leaves have only just begun to change. This does not bode well for the future.

Please send gloves and/or an unseasonable heat wave to me, c/o SUNY Geneseo. Thanks.

Sirrah, a word with you

2008-10-06T16:36:00.003-04:00

Polonius: What do you read, my lord?
Hamlet: Words, words, words.

STORY OF MY LIFE. I just handed in my Shakespeare midterm after madly running through Henry IV, Part I and skimming Romeo and Juliet this morning. We all know I love my Will, but Zounds, I am wanting a reprieve from mine Bard lest my humble speech begin to mirror his. I have two more midterms this week, both of which will require further expeditions into that twenty-six charactered jungle.

To move from reading words to writing them, last week presented two opportunities to write that were exciting in that they brought to light the fact that "hey, writing is a somewhat marketable skill!" It is a heartening realization.

Firstly, I am part of a scriptwriting team for a haunted house in Geneseo called the Ford Mansion; we are responsible for writing lines for the tour guides, storytellers and characters along the tour of this four-story mansion. The first writers' meeting was on Saturday, and it began with a tour of the house and the barn on the property . . . it's been said that the ghosts of two horses are still present, and that sometimes the hallways will inexplicably smell of male cologne. It was completely creepy and completely awesome. I went there with the intention of just helping to write, but left committing two full weekends to acting in it as well. I am so excited.

The second opportunity is one that I don't have a whole lot of information about, but a representative from the Department of Asian Studies came into our fiction class to recruit writers for a play to be performed sometime next year about Asian-American immigrants. She has a collection of interviews on DVD that need to be dramatized for the stage, and it sounds like a great project. Plus, how fantastic would it be to see something you wrote performed on a stage? Your name in a playbill? So cool.

Anyways, all I can say is that I'm glad I live for this stuff . . . life this week would otherwise seem quite dismal. Either way, though, I am seriously looking forward to a celebratory few hours of Guitar Hero once my midterms are finished. If you can hear Guns N' Roses from wherever you're reading this from come Thursday . . . it's me.

Our campus is hellbound, apparently

2008-10-01T13:30:00.007-04:00

As I was walking to fiction yesterday, I passed the green and saw a big commotion that included several huge signs and rainbow flags. I wanted to stop to see what was going on but I was already late for class so I kept going towards Welles; on my way in, I ran into my classmates and professor, all of whom were going to see what the deal was.

It was an anti-homosexual rally consisting of this man in a leather jacket and mirrored sunglasses and his twentysomething daughter. They held up huge signs emblazoned with misconstrued Biblical passages while the man shouted about how gays and their supporters were all condemned to Hell. About twenty students with Pride Alliance flags were lined up in front of him, singing All You Need is Love while he kept shouting bullshit about how John Lennon was evil. I was seriously proud of us all as a collective because while some choice words were deservedly thrown at him, nobody got belligerent. We just started singing things like "Jesus loves me, the Bible tells me so," while same-sex couples stood in front of the guy on his platform kissing and we cheered them on. During this, some kid started waving around a big sign that read I LOVE SCIENCE, so we hooted and hollered about that, too. After about forty minutes of rallying, this kid waving a pole with colored ribbons on it yelled, "Let's all leave! Don't give him anyone to preach to!" That seemed like a fairly good time to regroup for class, so we headed back to Welles and power-workshopped for the 50 minutes left of our class time.

According to that guy, I am hellbound on two counts: for supporting gay rights and for being a Catholic, because apparently the religion does not exist. Oh, darn. A girl interviewed me for our paper, and when she asked me what I thought I told her that he was making a mockery of faith in general. Because he was. Not to mention the fact that he was telling some of my friends and classmates that they are fundamentally flawed. Which is bullshit. Whoever he is, that man is a repulsive waste of a human being and I couldn't be prouder of my campus for responding to his mindless slander in such a positive way. The man and his daughter left around six, finally giving up after six hours of shouting nonsense to the wind. I couldn't help but think about the conversation they would have on the ride home--were they proud of their day's work?

All I can say is that we should all invest in SuperSoakers before he tries stepping foot on our campus again.

Post script: I realize that this was not the best-written entry. Sentence structure hath given way to strong sentiment . . . sorry.

Keeping tabs on Mr. Sun

2008-09-28T17:01:00.005-04:00

The World Sunlight Map is now the first website I check upon opening my web browser. It shows the cloud cover and sunlight over the entire planet at the moment you look at it; by viewing it right now I can tell you that the sun is setting on the eastern coast of South America and that tomorrow's sun has already risen in half of Australia. I know that if Michal were to look up this second there would be no clouds in her Israeli night sky. How amazing is that?

It weirds me out a little bit, though, because seeing the progression of sunlight makes the passing of days so very tangible . . . part of me always wants to push the darkness back to the east and extend time. What would I need to bribe the sun with for a little more weekend?

DARLA!

2008-09-21T22:55:00.005-04:00

Proof that Finding Nemo never gets old: I am snorting with laughter on the quiet floor just looking at this.

Will work for . . . fun?

2008-09-21T21:23:00.004-04:00

For those of you who don't already know, I was laid off at the library last week along with the other temp service employees due to budget cuts. My consolation has been the fact that they lost one of their better employees; I know how to use the fax machine no-problem, I am a Library of Congress shelving guru, and--big shocker--I'm nice to people.

So anyways, I am presently sitting upstairs in the library trying to catch up on work I missed while deathly ill last week and concurrently feeling a little nostalgic and really bad for Milne Library. There are stray books all over the place and when I went to sign out a power cord for my laptop, I had to tell the kid working where to find it and then remind him to give back my ID card.

I have the sincerest urge to just grab a cart and start organizing and reshelving, but I have a hazelnut coffee and an unwritten paper in front of me.

Again, their loss.

A nice little cocktail

2008-09-20T09:36:00.003-04:00

The over-the-counter drugs I'm supposed to be taking are as follows:

Claritin
Robitussin
Robitussin PM
prescription-strength Advil
nose spray
Sudafed
Tylenol

Something tells me that this is not the healthiest of combinations. A quick trip to Wal-Mart and I could have my own little meth lab in the dorm rooms. Anyone have a hotplate?

To Billy: I have tissues if you need them.

2008-09-17T20:32:00.004-04:00

On Friday, Billy Collins' new book of poetry finally arrived in the mail and since then I've been reading one or two poems a day to make it last. I have also been increasingly sick over the past few days; today has been the worst of it yet so I decided to just read them all as consolation.

Bad idea.

Ballistics is not the Billy Collins of yore; some of the poems in this book seem shallower than any of his past work, and the profound poems in the book deal with musings of separation and death. He just seems so sad, and while this may sound completely ridiculous, after reading virtually all of his work I can't help but feel as if I know him in some capacity.

So instead of feeling slightly better after sharing a cup of tea with my favorite poet, I have that secondhand sadness you feel when someone you love is unhappy. I just want to give him a big ol' germ-ridden hug.

I would usually insert an italicized sigh here, but in my present state it would lose the drama by turning into a hacking cough.

A neaky ituation

2008-09-10T19:46:00.006-04:00

A few days ago I was walking to class when I realized that the 'S' of 'Steuben' outside my residence hall was missing. I noted it but assumed the letter had fallen down or something so didn't think much of it.

Since then, though, I've been noticing other cases of a missing 'S' around Steuben--or more appropriately Teuben--Hall. The S on a big white board in the front lobby has been erased, a big wall decoration on the second floor now reads "WELCOME TO TEUBEN," and I am completely convinced that this is an intentional prank.

I find it quite hilario.

Just my luck

2008-09-08T12:12:00.006-04:00

I just opened my used copy of Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War and found a four-leaf clover pressed between its pages:Things like this remind me why I am in love with people as a collective.

Two other updates:

I won the position for hall council!
Did you know that a banjo is basically like a big tambourine (sans jingling) with strings and a long neck? Professor Kimball was playing one today, along with an autoharp and his guitar. I'm starting to love old country music.

Snippets of home life

2008-09-07T20:30:00.005-04:00

Today was the first real test for me as far as being away from home again is concerned and I believe I passed with flying colors:

Last night I went to bed before eleven because today needed to be a productive day. I woke up before ten and was able to go to the 10:15 mass as opposed to the 5:30 I usually attend. Church is probably what reminds me most of home here because it is very clearly a family activity. Anyways, I was there by myself and this family of four was sitting in front of me being adorable and such and I observed them without feeling sad.

After dinner, I was shooting around at the courts when this man and his young son and daughter show up. All of the baskets were taken except for one with a crooked rim, so I invited them to play at mine. We talked and played and the kids asked me a bunch of questions about school and invited me to live at their house and it was completely cute. The important thing, though, was that I felt content and happy with the fact that I was in a situation that reminded me so very much of playing basketball with Erin and my dad instead of wishing I were home doing so.

Anyways, I feel like both situations are indicative of how well the semester is going so far. Hall council elections were tonight . . . we'll see what happens.

I can has chuckle?

2008-09-05T13:20:00.006-04:00

I have come to the conclusion that I will never be too mature to enjoy goofy cat pictures with grammatically incorrect captions.

Live from the Blake basement

2008-09-04T19:21:00.004-04:00

So today was our (my and Ellen's) first radio broadcast of the semester . . . I won't say it was disastrous because it wasn't at all, but I left thoroughly shamed. Before telling you this story, though, let me first disclaim that I recognize my complete lack of knowledge when it comes to music in general; one of the reasons I enjoy radio so much is because I'm always hearing something I've never been exposed to before.

Anyways, today during the show a slip of paper printed out of a machine near the sound board directing us to run a weekly broadcast test (when you hear a few long, shrill beeps randomly and a muffled voice telling you that "this is a test of the emergency broadcast system"). I never had to run one last semester and had no idea which button to press, so I sent an instant message to the radio director. He was really cool about it and told me what to do, turning on his own radio to check and make sure it worked. After telling me it had gone through, he sent me a random person's name followed by a question mark, as if checking to see who he was speaking with.

So I respond, "Nope, this is Meghan and Ellen," then realize a split second after sending the message that the name he'd sent was the name of the artist playing on the radio at that moment.

DUH.

So, uh, moral of the story: save your pride and always stay up on the current jams.

Side note: I didn't share the name of the artist because I HAVE ALREADY FORGOTTEN IT.

I'm hopeless.

Scandalous!

2008-09-03T00:36:00.000-04:00

I made a conscious decision to do no work tonight. So glad I can stick to my goals.

Today was crazier than usual; instead of the weekend train slowing normally and letting me off at Monday, I had to jump off full-speed at Tuesday. Not a pleasant transition. Yesterday I forced 200 pages of Moll Flanders down my throat for British Literature . . . Katy and I were reading in the common room and every ten minutes or so I would look up at her and announce the status of the titular character; examples of such expulsions are as follows:

"Her lover just paid her to marry his brother."
"She just had three kids with her biological brother without knowing it was him."
"A cuckolded banker just divorced his wife to marry her."

With all this ridiculous eighteenth-century scandal going on, you'd think it would be an interesting read. Not so. It must take a whole lot of skill to make something that raunchy so positively bland.

Dr. Asher, however, is a doll. Am I allowed to call my male professor a doll? Because he is. He sounds exactly like Bill Murray except for the joking, and he's completely laid-back and genuinely interested in anything and everything that his students offer during class. We meet once a week, on Tuesdays.

The time is now 12:36, and the library will be closing in 24 minutes. Time to go wake people up.

The social experiment

2008-08-31T11:40:00.004-04:00

Last night was the first radio party of the semester, and Ellen, Julie and I attended.

In preparation for said party, I bought a six-pack of IBC cream soda and packed it in a little brown J. Crew bag to come with us. When we arrived there, we countered their Coronas and Yellowtail with our own glass bottles filled with amber liquid, and nobody questioned a thing. We laughed and danced to Of Montreal like we would any other time, and people had no problem joining in because they thought we had been drinking as well. At one point, a friend of ours walked over and we encouraged him to dance with us too. His reply was "No, I really haven't had enough for me to dance, really," so we let him in on our secret. He didn't believe us until he tried a sip, laughed, and allowed himself to be taught the Dino Dance.

It makes me think about social drinking as a concept--it's like a medium through which people feel "allowed" to be silly and fun together without being judged for their words and actions . . . it really is interesting. I still have another six-pack of party drinks, so I believe we'll be trying it again fairly soon.

Side note: Six bottles of cream soda cost $2.47 at Wal-Mart. The money saved went to possibly the best slice of pepperoni pizza I've ever had from Mia's.

All in all, the night was a big win.

Hi, I'm alive . . . just busy as heck

2008-08-25T21:31:00.003-04:00

I am officially in love with this semester. I feel like this is my first fall at Geneseo because last year was so clouded with anxiety about having friends and not having a roommate and whatever that I didn't notice a lot of things. I'd elaborate, but after one day of classes I already have plenty of work to keep me busy. Expect something tomorrow night at work . . . I'm closing at 1 AM.

Side note: I went to sleep before eleven last night and woke up before eight. EPIC.

Me, myself and . . . sigh.

2008-08-16T01:34:00.005-04:00

"I HATE EVERYBODY. EVERYBODY HATES ME," reads my paperback diary circa second grade, all-caps rage scrawled in purple marker shouting my personal vendetta against the world. I'm positive that I am not who I was on that angry day in second grade, because I've decided that I would like to meet everyone before deciding that I hate anyone.

I came across my old diaries while packing today, so instead of boxing linens I sat in the middle of my messy room and revisited my former selves. It was weird; every time I scoffed at something ridiculous I'd written about a boy or my sister or whatever other crisis was at hand I felt I was betraying myself a little bit. It made me think about whether or not we are the people we were at earlier ages, and if we are in part, to what extent we were our current selves then. Does that make sense?

A question for you: what span of time does your "current self" encompass? Do you believe that you are the same person you were last year, last month, yesterday?

I've been trying to answer that for myself, and if I think about it enough, I'm never satisfied beyond a day, a moment if I'm overthinking. Which I am, at the moment.

Barbara-isms

2008-08-10T16:51:00.002-04:00

(while showing me a rug she'd purchased at Kohl's)
"See, it says 'Peace, Love, Faith.' Ain't that nice? I'm real into that stuff now, now I'm a Born-Again Christian 'cause everything they say is the damned truth."
(later)
"Do you have any angels here, anything like that? I'm into that big time, I'm into figures, elephants, crystals . . . look, I've got these crystal bracelets and I'm wearing my jade elephant right now."

(she pulls out a calendar filled with pictures of Billy Ray Cyrus posing shirtless with various tractors and muscle cars)
B: Do you like Billy Ray Cyrus? You like him?
M: Yeah, that Achy Breaky Heart's pretty classic.
B: Well, look at this. I saw him in concert how many years ago . . . look at that, when's it from?
M: 1994.
B: Well me an' my daughter rented this great red car and saw him in concert at Westbury then; he's just the best. Y'know who I love now though? (puts hand on heart) That Ricky Martin is just dreamy. That Livin' La Vida Loca? Ahhh. I've got big posters of him all over my room, big ones in glass.

(after telling me about how she cursed out the teller at Chase and got a plastic pink pig keychain out of it)
"You take a lesson from me, I'm smart. I know what I'm doing."

And then she said the one thing I couldn't dispute:

"I'm gettin' crazy in my old age!"

Portrait of a bag lady

2008-08-08T18:13:00.003-04:00

Well, she isn't a bag lady by definition because this woman does have a home (if her stories are true), but on all other counts Barbara can be adequately described as such.

Barbara is swiftly becoming the local wraith of East End Shirt Company. She's a random lady who visits the store daily, giant shopping bags in tow, bartering for trinkets and jewelry with anything and everything she has on her. After counting back the years since she'd seen Billy Ray Cyrus in concert (14, by the way), I learned that she is sixty-five . . . which shouldn't have surprised me because she asks for a senior citizen discount at least three times during each visit.

The answer is always no.

Barbara's hair is wiry and black, streaked with strands of white only slightly longer than the witch hair growing out of her chin. Behind glasses bent in such a way that it looks like she was punched on the bridge of her nose, one of her watery brown eyes is clouded by a cataract, so she's constantly asking whoever is working to tell her the sizes and prices of various store items she's interested in "buying." Her tops vary, but she almost always wears an ankle-length bohemian skirt. Even if she hadn't told me several times that she recently lost fifty pounds ("I used to be a hundred and fifty-something, but now I'm a hundred twenty-something!") I would've guessed as much because although she's on the smallish side, the extra skin on her arms create bingo wings like you've never seen. One day she was wearing a strappy green peasant top that didn't quite cover her lacy, light pink bra, and didn't cover her sunburned back at all. Because of this, I could see a protrusion right in the crease of her back, a pinkie fingernail-sized growth hanging off her skin so precariously that I wanted terribly to flick off--if it wouldn't require making contact, that is. Each limb sparkles with costume jewelry--chunky, beaded bracelets, a rhinestone-studded watch, fake silver anklets. She wears more necklaces at a time than I own altogether.

When she dropped by the first time, I wasn't super-friendly towards her because I had zero patience for her questions, her stories, or her bartering. But then, of course, she starts going on and on about how "nobody is nice to her," playing on my stupid conscience. She totally played me, and before I knew it I was hearing about how she gave the people at Chase a piece of her mind because it wasn't her fault that four checks bounced, blah blah blah, then I was showing her how to use her brick of a Nokia cell phone . . . she gave me a handful of Dum-Dum lollipops before she left because she's nice to people that are nice to her. She says.

More to follow.

On losing a friend

2008-07-27T21:00:00.011-04:00

suddenly the transition between is and was
is like learning past tense in a foreign language
(when did "we are so close" become "we were so close?")
training my brain to naturally say
I was you were he was

while thinking about the strangeness of that foggy place
where the present is sloughed off
in a seedy bus terminal
of departures marked by tears
or by shouting and spite

and in the tumult there is me,
dry-eyed, shoulders sagging as I watch you retreat
fading into past tense
as the back of your head becomes lost in the crowd

later, alone on a train headed home
I'll watch dusky backyards through my reflection
in the window and conjugate, murmuring
you were he was we were

Amber is the color of your energy

2008-07-22T01:42:00.003-04:00

I may not have remembered this verbatim, but I promise you that the following conversation happened between me and some woman yesterday.

Woman: There is too much going on in the city. It is just so much better out here; this is where I am meant to be.

Me: Oh? Whereabouts in New York do you live?

Woman: In the Village, St. Mark's Place. I mean, it's nice and all, but I just can't sleep at night sometimes and I really feel my glow there (she waves her hands around her torso), you know? It just glows and I have to get away. I'm trying these crystals (tugs at the amethyst necklace she's wearing) but it is just too much there; I need to escape and relax near the water.

Me: (smiles and nods)

Woman: Well obviously I would need to be on the water, I mean, hello . . . Pisces! I don't know if you are familiar with astrology but water is our element. The coast is where I am meant to be.

She begins walking out the door.

Woman: We Pisces are very straightforward, but also very romantic.

Reading trumps sleep again

2008-07-21T02:51:00.002-04:00

I'm on a book binge . . . I finished A Thousand Splendid Suns a few minutes ago. Part of me wishes I had something to write about, but for now I'm content in having the time to read anything and everything. Next on the list: We Were The Mulvaneys, to be started tomorrow because I'm going to the track at eight.

Gah. That is five hours and nine minutes from now. Goodnight? Good morning?

Side note: why is goodnight considered a compound word while 'goodmorning' is not? V. curious.