Return of the tree-painting elf

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

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!"

--Fanny Price in Mansfield Park

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

Floating schools and thoughts

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

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

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

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

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 . . .

. . . 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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:

Being called ma'am. Julie agrees.