Burning the Bag

The end is near.

This time next week, I will be finished with the undergrad part of my life.
But I have one promise to keep when it is all said and done.

I promised my co-workers that I would burn my "hideous" pink bag. They have despised it the moment they noticed it was past season and I refused to put it away, use it for the beach, etc.

But I am ok with this, though it has served its purpose (with or without dignity).

You see, I have decided when I grow up and go to grad school, I will roll around one of those book bags with wheels on it. I will be so very adult (I think we can all agree, I was never so very chic anyway).

The MisAdventures of a Fearless Fruitfly

"And this is my little sister," he said, his hand at the small of my back, urging me forward to meet the coordinater of the night's event, an owner of a local couture shoe boutique.

It was Take-Over and this was my immersion into the world of, well, a special kind of social networking. Michael, of course, was lying about our relationship. And after a few of our little outings, seeing the same people repeatedly, the truth was discovered.

"Oh. You're just another fag hag," his new boyfriend said snidely upon our introduction.

He was WASPy, tall, blond and had a mouth full of lasered-white teeth. I referred to him as Mr. Ed (a nickname that simultaneously offended and entertained my friend Micheal). I thought his remark was rather rude considering that A) this was the first time I had met him B) Michael was the one who invited me, I was not the desperate tag-along I seemed to be and C) the word hag is repulsive (hag I am not). My astonishment was apparent, so Michael's other friends suggested a much more female-friendly term...and that is how I earned my title as fruitfly.

I took my title seriously, putting on my heels and attending events, helping with dinner parties, wearing many playful dresses--all while sipping at a various assortment of martinis.

At one Take-Over, I amused my Gay by dancing with a middle-aged lesbian, at her request (or rather when she pulled me onto the dance floor, Michael laughing at me the whole time). I did whatever I could to amuse him.

***

"Hey, Michael," I shouted across the hall. "Can I wear this dress?"

I had been bored and nosey and decided to go through his closest while he was getting ready. It was one of the dresses he and a group of guys bought for PRIDE in ATL the year past (the same year these middle-to-late-aged men decided to randomly join the parade line, referring to themselves as Sisters of the Rainbow). They each had a various color of the same strapless, cotton floral sundress. Michael's dress was fuchsia, but I chose Marc's (his live-in boyfriend) blue version. It went better with the orange peep-toes I had worn that day to work.

He laughed and agreed it would be fun, so I shaved my legs in his bathtub and tucked in the straps to my (non-strapless) bra and we headed to the Pink House. Needless to say, we were the hit of the night and I was happy to have been of assistance.

***

We have not been out together in a while...since last spring. With school and work...and his new long-distance lover, we have not made the time. Anyway, I am twenty pounds too heavy now to be an accessory and fifty pounds too little to be a true groupie (really, you should see these women). So until the I make the necessary adjustments, I will not be Out.

I quit.

Not really. I am being dramatic.

Every semester I hit the wall. I become a crazy person who works, goes to school and hangs out in the library any time it is open. And I prefer USC Lancaster library to our Everett. The study rooms are always available and it smells like new carpet and it is right down the road.

I have hit that wall...and I am sure next week will be the beginning of my library addiction and everything else that follows. Paper due Thu, Tue, Tue, Thu, Wed. I still haven't begun the Core paper that was due two weeks ago. I am so uninspired...Core just makes me feel angry, guilty and helpless and it's a waste of my time. But that is a different blog.

Second Essay

I haven't actually changed anything yet. But I have marked the papers up and noted where I want to make changes. I will move a segment and add a few more things...but I have to do the research. I'll do it tomorrow (that's been my motto).

Don't Be a Player Hater

How do you break it to your classically trained teacher that you no longer want to learn another version of "Air"?

What you really want to learn to play on your pedal harp is Nirvana's "Come As You Are".

The openning bass lines would be amazing.

I got up the nerve to ask her earlier this semester if I could play my wire strings like an upright bass (without giving away my intent of knowing).

"You mean like this?" she replied as she grabbed at the strings, plucking out a jazzy number.

Yes, like that. I nodded with a gleam in my eye.

When I grow up, I want to play Kurt Cobain over any classical composer. I already have my drummer lined up.

Does this make me any less of a musician?

Check this out: I'm not a Metallica fan, but these harpists are...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xppNIBGzxYs&feature=channel_page

A Lesson in Creative Writing (Nonfiction and Fiction)

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=102473171&ft=1&f=1032

Trivial Refute

Some people (i.e. Klosterman) believe it is absurd (even, shall we say, trivial) when people say, "such and such changed my life"...dramatic emphasis here, SJP style (this involves simultaneously clutching your hands to your chest and bending your knees, while drawing out every vowel sound in your declaration, then winding down to a whimpering grand finale. For an example of this, please refer to any episode of Sex and the City).

Well, here is my triviality (in addition to my obsession with fetching the mail everyday, religiously shutting off unnecessary lights, checking to make sure doors are locked, and avoiding any hint of scary movies, including the trailers on tv)...

Sofia Coppola changed my life.

I had rented Lost in Translation and watched it alone in my living room. I remember the scene well. It was really only one scene.

After Charlotte visits the Buddhist temple and returns to her hotel room. She dials her friend and tries to relate her feelings (or lack of feelings, in this case), she wants to feels validated (or simply heard), but her friend is distracted on the other end of the line (completely detached and missing the urgency) and must go. Charlotte is alone (and suddenly brutally aware of this).

It was probably a collision of watching the right emotionally-charged film at a very unstable time in my life. But I firmly believe a film literally altered the course of my life.

Of course, I am likely blowing this out of proportion...but that's the point of this exercise, right? (whimper whimper).

Wearing my heart on my...playlist

There is something intimate in revealing one's playlist...leaving yourself open to a sort of personal criticism. Mine is continually changing. But I here is my current twenty-five (in no particular order).

1. Samson--Regina Spektor (though Hotel Song and On the Radio are two favorites)
2. Sex on Fire--Kings of Leon (newish)
3. Hands on Your Heart--Jose Gonzales (song, Down the Line, love at first listen)
4. Don't Let Us Get Sick--Jill Sobule (Warren Zevon cover)
5. Hotel Yorba--The White Stripes
6. Hyperballad--Big Heavy Stuff (Bjork cover)
7. Don't Think Twice, It's Alright--Bob Dylan
8. I Feel it All--Fiest
9. Oh Well--Fiona Apple
10.I Summon You--Spoon
11.Upward Over the Mountain--Iron & Wine
12. Black Dog--Led Zeppelin
13. I Ain't Proud--Langhorne Slim
14. Black Star--Gillian Welch(Radiohead cover)
15. Lover, You Should Have Come Over--Jeff Buckley
16. Delicate--Damien Rice
17. Bossy--Keilis
18. All These Things That I have Done--The Killers
19. Since I've Been Loving You--Led Zeppelin
20. 7 Nation Army--The White Stripes
21. In An Aeroplane Over the Sea--Neutral Milk Hotel
22. Casimir Pulanski Day--Sufjan Stevens
23. Wake Up--Arcade Fire
24. Tick--Yeah Yeah Yeahs
25. Hallelujah--Rufus Wainwright version...yes. I'm lame. (Leonard Cohen cover)

I have left off obvious favorites (Dylan, Stones, PF, Young, etc.)....but you get the idea.

Anyone else up for sharing?

Sorry, Dr. K., but I just don't get the Boss.

I have never understood Bruce Springsteen. And I don't understand why he continues to remain so relevant (or manages to appear this way). His mediocre music seems washed up. I understand that at some point his lyrics spoke to the common man, the working man who was fed up with the Man. (Clearly, I am missing something because I cannot manage to relate whatever he represented into words).
All I see now is a man in some version of a pair of tattered jeans and a lousy sleeveless (button down or t) shirt singing antiquated protest music. And watching him during the Superbowl half-time show, it all seemed so unforgivably contrived (I guess being contrived is part of the whole Superbowl thing).

He attempts Neil Young in meaningfulness/timelessness and Eddie Van Halen in musicality (I realize this statement is NOT accurate) yet falls somewhere closer to Britney Spears, as he is both common and commercial (but this statement is accurate).

He is the Emeril Lagasse of the music world.

This is one (the main one) of three reasons I will not attend Bonnaroo this year. The Boss will rule, headlining a four hour show.


And bad eighties (and seventies) angst tunes just don't do it for me.

Correction: I am told that this may be a lack of education on my part (as I have unabashedly admitted) and after a long, fervent lecture on my "lack of appreciation," I have concluded that this misunderstanding is because I was, well...born in the USA (and in the eighties).

I'd like to thank my mother for remembering my girl parts: a response to Chuck's chapter 7

I played soccer.



I played soccer because I was not allowed to play the sport I wanted to play. I was not allowed to play ice hockey.



Ice hockey, my mother said, was not for girls. When I fervently rejected this notion (approximate age: 10), my mother calmly, sternly replied that ice hockey was not for girls. It was rough and I might hurt my...self.



Initially I took this to mean that my face would beat up, nose broken, etc., etc. But reading between the lines of adult ambiguity, I finally found out what she was getting at...that is, my mother was protecting my uterus.



See, I have resented this protection for many years. At a time when Northeastern girl teams were becoming increasing popular and prep schools were granting scholarships for players, I was taking out my aggression on the black-and-white bane of my existence, resenting my pre-adolescent life and my mother who didn't know anything. Ice hockey was my Golden Ticket.



The thing is...if she would have allowed me this opportunity, I wouldn't have resented this unfortunate part of my life...I would have quit within two years (or less), like I did everything else...clarinet, piano, debate club, yearbook, college, marriage, and many part-time jobs...uterus in tact.



Instead I will pass along my genes in mint condition, helping to further overpopulation. I will raise my children, a black spot on my heart. And someday, I, too, will limit my children's ambition by way of gender. I, in my adult blindness, will single-handedly overturn their destiny.

Always-That-Different

I was just reading over my essay again. I unconsciously used THAT word on my first page about one hundred and fifty-seven times. and sorry, guys, it's complete [expletive]...for now.

I fear I may die in the dentist chair

This morning I get my wisdom teeth out.

Ever since I was faced with the reality that, yes. I, too would need my four wisdom teeth out, I have feared dying in a pleather dentist chair.
I think this is up there on the top ten list of worst ways to die...so undignified.

I have watched one-too-many prime time documentaries on over-anesthesia related deaths and so this fear has grown and lingered.

When the chills begin to run up my spine and my body begins a cold sweat over this thought, I tell myself Bob Dylan got his wisdom teeth out and he lived to have a meaningful career ( though some would argue that it abruptly ended in 1965 when he plugged in his guitar. I would argue that it was in 2004, when he sold out to Victoria's Secret, except that Modern Times came out only a couple of years later...and is good.)

While I do not know if this is the truth--that Bob, in fact, did have his teeth out, it makes me feel better. It is like saying everyone has it done...it is a rite of passage into adulthood...and it goes relatively ok, except for the people who have been over-anesthetized and die, have lost feeling in their face due to nerve damage, or develop the all-too-common case of dry-socket.

But I realized that this everyone is not good enough for me. I needed an oral-surgery hero. Driving home one night, deep in thought and fret, it crossed my mind.
Bob Dylan had his wisom teeth out. You'll be ok. You'll live.

...now if I could only work on that meaningful career...let's not get too ahead of ourselves.

Essay 2

I am writing about the circumference of Beyonce's thighs. No. Literally.

Crunch-Time

This last blog for the week is a little less than inspired. I have two papers due this week (one 4pgs, the other 2pgs), two presentations, and I haven't started any of it.
It's mid-semester and I am now feeling the stress.
Off to work...

(Next week: I promise a better blog)

Growing My Own Herb

My mother-out-of-law gave me a Chia (Yes. Those crazy Chia Pet people) herb garden, in keeping with my tradition (can it be called a tradition if I started it last year?) of growing my own herbs, tomatoes and hot peppers, during the summer months. This year I want to also plant a veggie garden, though with the SC soil, this means building a raised garden bed.

You see, I live on approximately 15 acres. I love the country. And while part of me yearns for an urban setting--a place where I would be able to trade in my car for a Vespa (trading also the 100 mile roundtrip commute each day) and live in a flat above my favorite local grocer--the other part of me wants a semi-self-sustaining life in the country. I want one sheep (with the black face and white coat) for aesthetics and two pygmy goats to keep the grass down. I want a couple of chickens (though I heard they smell foul) to lay eggs so I can make my own bread and pasta and yummy treats. And I want bees for honey and wax. But I want to be the girl who can do this AND wear the 4 inch pumps.

Is that too much to ask?

I was thinking how Eva Gabor (Lisa Douglas) had it good. I mean she was the (aspiring) farmer's wife and she wore couture...the best of both worlds.

So, perhaps I will be cleaning out the chicken coop a few years from now, harvesting the ripe summer squash and smoking out the beehive...but I will be doing it all in a pair of Louboutins (Please. Manolos are for amateurs).

Amendment to a previous blog

I forgot to add Nickleback (or is it Nickelback?) and any band that sounds remotely like this band to the list of hated things.

In keeping with the number seven. I propose to make Paris Hilton and Tyra Banks an equal and single, deplorable entity.

Food has feelings, too.

My head was swimmy after class last night. Literary Criticism does that to me. I'm weak, I know. But, it was post-structuralism.
I decided that I needed a oreo milkshake to wash down all of the signifier-signified-aporia-blah-blah-bore-ia (I am an emotional eater. Nothing to hide here).

When I pulled up to BK (aka Satan). I noticed a new advert: ANGRY WHOPPER

Since when did our food become emotional? Who in hell thinks of these things?
(I guess someone who is trying to keep their job relevant in this downer of an economy)
And what makes the damn thing angry anyway? If any of you carnivores care to sample, can you please tell me how angry food is possible?

"These six things the Lord hates; yes, seven are an abomination to him..."

1. Mike Collins and the smug commentary of Charlotte Talks
2. Tyra Banks
3. Mothers who let their daughters listen to Britney Spears (and other such Pop Princesses)
4. People who drive slowly in the left lane (the passing lane)
5. Fast food joints
6. Paris Hilton
7. American Idol

His Eyes Were Watching Blogs

This is not the blog I wanted to write this week. But I woke from a most distressing dream this morning. It went something like this...

I missed another NonFiction class (knowing I had already missed two), but I had no excuse this time for not being there...and it was the class for which our final draft of the papers were due. I was in New York City...randomly...in Manhattan. Prof. Renfroe called me (I suppose with the aid of those handy-dandy notecards he has) and asked me why I was not in class. (Why the hell wasn't I in class?!) When I got off the phone, I got in my car and raced to our class meeting. I remember doing the math, three hours, I'll be there in time for class to end (We must have been living in CT or somewhere that close--in order for this to work out).
Anyhow, I got there just in time.
Everything was fine, I got there with moments to spare, except for the fact that my paper had not been revised or printed and I had missed another quiz. (There were also a lot of people in the class from my other real life classes). The class met at Prof. Renfroe's house. Apparently, the assignment was to cook your favorite stew and write about the process. Umm...well, I walked in on a scene with many kettles-a-boiling. (Trust me, you are as shocked as I).
Well, I know that I needed to somehow find time to revise (as you all have advised), which included actually finishing my paper, and print the damn thing without Prof. Renfroe knowing that I was not, in fact, prepared for his class.

And--just like that--divine intervention...or, in literature, deus ex machina--Robert Plant showed up to save the day. It was just him. No Jimmy Page. No Alison Krauss. It was just enough to hold every body's attention in awe(distracting from my short comings, if only for a moment). I finished the paper, scrambling to make revisions...and no one even noticed.

I don't even think he sang for ya'll--or did his little hair flip/sway thing--or even offered up any good drugs.

Let's all just hope I get these revisions completed...because this sort of saving grace is as likely as Jimmy and Robby announcing the Led Zeppelin reunion tour.

In Response to Chapter 7, Pamela Anderson is not attractive, but these people are:

1. Scarlett Johansson (obvious reasons, plus no plastic surgery necessary)
2. Kate Winslet (see note above)
3. Jenny Lewis (semi-rocker thing going on)
4. Jennifer Connelly (gorgeous, despite the vein that runs through the middle of her forehead during emotional scenes in her movies)
5. Tina Fey (while I realize she is a not an obvious choice, though smart and funny, if you saw her Annie Lebowitz photographs in the January 2009 issue of Vanity Fair, you'd know why.)

Also, Pamela Anderson is not the reason women hate their bodies, though someone like Nicole Kidman is (tall, slender, elegant). I think Chuck's perception of how women feel about Pamela Anderson (or feel about themselves because of Pam) is completely devoid of any reality.

Does anyone care to agree or disagree?

Klosterfuck

Does this cynical bastard like anything?

And, yes. I did just start reading.

Part 2

I do not tell people whom I meet the story. Many people have asked me in polite conversation how I came to North Carolina. I, yet another Yankee, who ventured past the Mason-Dixon line to settle into a life of affordable housing, lower taxes, and warmer weather. I answer the question, with a wry smile and say it was just a change of scenery. Charlotte is the Promised Land of vinyl-sided subdivision and drive-thru Starbucks. I do not tell them that when I moved here into a two-bedroom apartment in South Charlotte, how I cried when I realized for the first time that, indeed, there could be two McDonald’s on one road, or two Wal-Marts, or two anythings that could exist in the myriad of shopping centers that polluted the southern part of the city. I was used to simplicity. Places like this did exist up North, but I had managed to avoid them. I grew up in a small, middle class city in Massachusetts. It is a city that had been built on the furniture industry and, like many cities in New England, resembled more of a town. We only had one Wal-Mart, which existed outside the city limits.

W.W.W.D.

I bought a treadmill and stuck it in the stuffy, spare bedroom. I did this so I will no longer make excuses not to go to the gym or go running outside.

While I was jogging last night, after work, the White Stripes blaring in the background, I couldn't help but think...What Would Wordsworth Do?

Surely, he could not imagine "spots of time" in relation to my artificial environment (heat, lighting, sound...a moving "road"). I can't either.

Ahh....nature, why can't you be more accomodating?

Discretion, anyone?

The professor was leading a discussion on the Mary Wollstonecraft’s A Vindication of the Rights of Woman. We were discussing Rousseau and Dr. Whatshisname’s belief that women should be educated in cunning, beautifying themselves, and something else. That these were essential to gaining power in their lives, love and marriage. The “playthings of men,” etc, etc.
The Professor asked something like, “Is this true for women today? Do women still behave this way?” And, if I recall correctly, a few people politely said no.

I was apparently wearing my thoughts on my face (as I do) and the professor noticed and asked, “Antoinette, do you think so?”
To which I replied, in an outburst, “I watch The Real Housewives of Orange County!”
(This, in a sentence, was my very educated rebuttal. Meaning, yes. women do still act this way to gain power.)

A sinner’s confession.
I got a few laughs and a couple of people just shook their heads in disgust.

What is it that we are learning in this class? Saying a lot without revealing, in a sense, our deepest, darkest secret. Yeah—haven’t really caught on.

(P.S.  I am rooting for Gretchen)

This is my rant.

I am here in the airport. It is desolate. I have never flown on a Saturday evening. It is quiet except for the woman who is sitting three seats from me. She is probably in her fifties.

I am trying to read about Alexander Pope. I have lots of reading to catch up on. But, here, I am instead distracted by the over-weight, middle-aged broad in a tacky bright pink sweater and fake pearl earrings.

At first she was loudly crunching her salad. Shoveling it in, forkful upon forkful. It’s okay. Focus. Focus. I chant my mantra in my head.

Next she opens her rice, snack mix. It is a loud, thin plastic container; the kind dried fruit and nuts are packaged in at the supermarket. She opens it and starts throw it back in handfuls. Chopping down heavily on mouthfuls of the crunchy pieces. Do you know what this sounds like??? The chopping of baked goods coupled with the smack of the saliva at the back of her throat.

Ok. Her cell phone rings. And she picks up. I have a break! Finally, no more loud chewing.

No. It gets worse. She is simultaneously eating the snacks and talking to the other person on the phone. Her voice grows louder as she begins gossiping (oh god. a lisp.) about so-and-so and how he lost all the money he had in the stock market, and how he will lose his ski-house and that he and his family will have to live with relatives up in North Conway and that she “never thought it would come to thisssttthhh. It isstthh the wortthhhsstt I’ve sstthhheen in my lifetime.” Her speech, the sound of her voice is drawn out at the end of each sentence—for dramatic emphasis, mind you.

A man sitting across the section from me looks up at me from his book. Really? He seems to say, tilting his head forward to look over the top of his reading glasses.

Her commentary has finally pushed to me to make my usual move of frustration. I take out my phone….and write an impassioned text message to share my anger with a friend, in hopes that the venting will relieve the growing desire to pummel my phone at her face.  But I hold back. But the vision of my desired action, grants me enough satisfaction to hold me over.

Her phone call ends. She is vigorously brushing crumbs of her stiff, cotton pants. Why is it that some people cannot just be quiet!

I think she can feel the hate. She is moving from me. I should have thought of that.

Never Underestimate the Power of the Stuffed Animal

Dakin sat in the corner of the room, a place where he sat for the last few years, on a stack of my clothes piled up in a laundry basket. Jeremy, my neat freak live-in, would tie my ruana scarves around his neck and put my summer hats on his head, so that they remained off the bedroom floor. We called him traveling Dakin, because he looked like a tourist, but he never went anywhere. He just sat there with a blank expression, staring off into the blue wall.

When the call came that Nana was in the hospital, Dakin’s situation changed. Nana was very sick, in the hospital. Nana was dying. I knew this call was going to come sooner or later. I, a full-time student in my senior year with a full time job, just didn’t know it would be so difficult to get there to say goodbye. So I had to bide my time somehow and sent Dakin as an ambassador.

Dakin had been good to me. I was introduced to him probably later then I should have been. I was ten or eleven. I received him as a gift from my Nana. She had bought him for a play I was in at the community theatre. She and my cousins took their seats close to the front of the theatre, near stage right, Dakin in tow. He was a bunny with nubby ecru “fur,”which resembled that of lamb, not bunny. He was dressed in a pink sailor suit with a white hat and matching pink ribbons. I named him after his maker, a name I found on the tag. (zero creative points)

Even though I was older, I still had intense night terrors. The kind that wakes you up in a sweat and the only way to clear your mind is to turn on the lights. But I was always terrified to make the step out of my bed to turn them on. Dakin soothed me somehow. I don’t know if it was the thought of my Nana that helped me. That she picked him out with care. That somehow her energy passed to the inanimate object or if it was that he was pillowy soft and easy to cuddle. All I know is that he made me feel better, safer. Eventually, his tail fell off and went missing and his garb became worn and his fur picked up lint.

Nevertheless, I knew he was the one to go. And I hoped that perhaps my energy might be passed to Nana, I hoped that she’d be comforted. If she died before I made it there, that she would know that I loved her, that I thought of her, that I wanted to be there, I wanted to say goodbye.

Jeremy’s mother washed his dusty body in preparation and, half-dry, I brought him to work to be packaged by the shipper. I packed him in a small box, careful to cushion his journey with tissue. I sealed him in his vessel with a small note. He was second-day aired.

My grandmother was clutching him as I walked into her room days later. I was seeing her in her condition for the first time. In her other hand was a seashell my younger had brought her, tokens of our thoughts and love surrounded her. Her head was tilted up so she could breathe. She had refused any life support. And they took her off that morning I arrived. She was surrounded by her husband, five children, most of her nineteen grandchildren and one of the five of her great-grandchildren. And Dakin.

She died five days later. My mother, who stayed home from the hospital that night, the night she had been moved into hospice, went to see my Papa the morning she died. I heard the news and, tired from crying, crawled into my parents’ bed with my nine and ten year old brothers, turned on cartoons and took a nap.

When I awoke, Dakin was on the dining room table, the seashell tied to the ribbon around his collar. Remnants of Nana’s last days. An orphan of death. It was over. Only the smell of ivory soap, face lotion and hospital lingered on his slouchy body.

Later, at Nana and Papa’s house, my older cousins, sister and I thumbed through pictures, trying to find pictures of Nana for her funera. We spent an hour or so going through hundreds of pictures, spanning nearly eighty years, from black and whites, to the milky colors of the seventies and eighties, to the digital vivids of today. Close to the end of our project, Angela made a discovery. She handed the photograph to me. The date was stamped on the back, 1996, and from the background I could tell that it was taken at our favorite vacation spot by the beach. It was a picture of Nana, holding Dakin by her face.

She was smiling. His was stitched on.

Liar, Liar. Pants on Fire...

I do not like to tell lies.  I hate to sound self-righteous, but I really try not to tell lies.  I have a potty mouth.  I have no temperance when it comes to sweets.  And I speed.  This is just a small list of my many sins.

I have given up on deliberate dishonesty...my face gives me away every time.  I might try but the corners of my mouth turn upward, in a sort of semi-grin and my eyes get big.  I don't believe my own bullshit.  So, how can I profess it to others.  So I have decided that honesty is my best policy.  I believe in cosmic order and that untruthfulness disrupts this order (I know...it's cheesy.  Forgive me.  I feel your eyes rolling as I write this).  I believe that small lies lead to bigger lies...and that leads to lying to yourself (and subsequently believing it), which is the greatest lie of all.

With that said...

When I read this assignment, I was sitting with my mother.  So I turned to and asked, "Can you remember a time when I lied?"  And she did, because she had recently found a document...a confession, you might say...and had laughed reading it.

She said that she found a letter that I wrote when I was in the eighth grade (or one of those middle school years).  I was homeschooled from grades 4-9 and we followed a curriculum that required our work to be turned into the actual school from where the curriculum was developed.  

Ok.  But let me explain one thing.  I am no math person.  That is why my major is English. 

I was having a hard time with algebra, so when I took my exam, stunned by the problems and not sure how to tackle them, I decided to take a peek into my mother/teacher's answer book...a big spiral bound book that held the key to every  problem.  I jotted down the answers and handed it in.

I am not sure how long it took her to notice, probably not much time at all.  See, in math you are given credit on the steps you take to solve the problem...even if the final answer if wrong. Well, needless to say, I had shown little to no effort.  

My mother confronted me.

My punishment was to write a letter of apology to the administrative board or superintendent, someone very important.  My confession and apology were sincere.  I don't remember if I cried, or if I was scared of the consequences, though I am sure of both.  The thing is...my mother never sent the letter, though she had let on that she did.  But she did hold on to it for all of these years.  

Lesson learned.

Part 1

It was a place that I could finally call my own, an attic transformed into a bedroom. It had no closet, a make shift door that only locked with a hook, and two small windows, whose frames were paint-chipped. When the owner of the house kindly agreed to let me paint the room a shade of green reminiscent of the inside of a ripe avocado, I was ecstatic. This enthusiasm carried me through the next couple nights when I realized that, though the house had central air conditioning, the cool air did not flow freely to my part of the house. I had been accustomed to sleeping with blankets, even during the unbearable summer evenings in the South. Because of central air, I did not have to give up my, very literal, security blankets. They made me feel safe enough to fall asleep during all of the nights I spent alone in my old house. But in this new place, in my own place, I was learning a different way of living, even if it was hinging on a meditative state that to kept my heart rate down and, subsequently, my body cool.

I was twenty-two and had never lived alone. I had housemates, four of them. I responded to an ad online when I was looking for a place to live. It was one of the only places that I could now afford and it was closer to my new workplace. My housemates were four strangers who found each other by way of their school. They were all a part of the NASCAR Institute, and though I stuck out sorely, they welcomed me. Jeremy, originally the only male roommate, talked about his cherry, IROC Camaro and other details having to do with cars and I managed to smile and nod in response. I had no clue about these things—transmissions, tires—of which he spoke. Kim was from Idaho. She was in her late thirties but appeared to be approximately fifty-two. She had a mouth only half full of teeth, the bottom half, which I never noticed as she droned on and on about the new man she met online, once beckoning me to see the new pictures he had sent her via email. The pictures were fakes. And then there was Casey, the younger girl, who had recently moved her boyfriend from back home into her room, so that they could be closer. Thus saving them the gas bill and the time spent traveling every other weekend to and from Kansas. They were the only two people I have met from Kansas.

The fact that I had four housemates never hampered my emerging independence. I had no one to whom I had to answer. I had no person who needed my attention or affection or opinion. It was me and my dogs and my books. I stopped cooking; in fact, I stopped eating in the evenings, except for the occasional yogurt or candy bar. I read more. I watched DVDs. And I fell asleep earlier. This room was my tiny slice of heaven, except that it increasingly felt like hell. The sweltering heat those nights were reminiscent of the night that propelled me here.

Nature and Art: The Mint on an August day

I went to the Mint Museum yesterday, alone, and I am glad I did. There is something reverent about museums; they are sacred buildings like churches of old. The gods of Myers Park and Corporate America bestow upon us souls splashed across canvases, minds dissected and bits mounted, presented for our curiosity, amusement…maybe…our salvation. I am not sure. Museums, like churches, lend themselves to the process of self-discovery. Why do I gravitate to this piece? What does this say about the world of which I am part? How does art reflect nature? There were two pieces that struck me in this (how? what? why?) way.

The first piece was a painting hanging in the first room I entered. The artist was an American painter named Milne Ramsey; the painting was called Route en Bretagne (Road in Brittany) 1882. I cannot talk about how it was made; I only can tell how I felt as I remember it now. It is a picture of a dirt road, on both sides of the road, there are trees lining the road as far as I can see. Behind the road, there is a stonewall and behind the wall there is a pasture. The sun is shining as it would on a late summer afternoon. There are no people, only me on this road and it the temperature is now just cooling. I can feel, as I walk under the trees, the warm sunlight on my face change from hot to cool as I pass under their shadows. The air is clean, the ground is rocky and it crunches as my heels dig into it and push away. I can hear birds sing and the sound of the wind slightly rusting leaves and tiny branches of the trees. Insects buzz by. I hear them in the background in somewhat of a harmony. I have been here before, as a child. We were on our bikes riding down this road, my sisters, my cousins and me, our mothers walking, talking to each other, lagging somewhere behind us. We did not care to wait for them either, the breeze felt too good on our faces as we rode through the light-speckled shadows, giggling with freedom. It was us and it was nature (or what we knew of nature in its manmade glory). This is one of the last days I remember with my cousins in our youth, before our kindred spirits were ripped apart by the move. I will forever regard the day they moved as an eternal loss, we so innocent and it was totally out of our control. But today is perfect, I say to myself, and continue on…the road that leads to anywhere.

A second piece, called Perpetual (2001) by Siobhan Hapanska, caught my eye. It was a dead pine tree on display in a clear case. From a distance, I saw it had goldish ornaments hanging from the branches. As I approached the tree for a better look, I realized that they were not gold ornaments, but clear, hollow ornaments that had been filled with the tree’s pine needles. It shocked me at first, the sight of the needles, once a part of the tree, crammed into the ornaments, now separated by glass, hanging off the tip of each branch in decoration. What was wrong with the way it had been in the forest? It was adorned with those needles in the first place. Though, they had then been green and fragrant. It made me think of Christmas, too. I have gone only one Christmas in my life without a Christmas tree. A couple of years, we had tried a new tradition, cutting them down ourselves. Yes, we became cold-blooded tree murderers. Surely, the pagans, those nature lovers, did not start this horrible thing. I do not know the group to blame, but it caught on: the mass murder of various evergreens for one day, left to dry out in our family rooms under the glow of colorful lights, glitter, ribbon and other trinkets, and then thrown out onto the streets for the garbage man to pick up. It a ritual as unusual as the single display I encountered; the duality of the evergreen as life in winter versus the death of that tree. It is like when you know you have a problem, but until somebody points is out plainly, you go on unaware or the damage you are causing.

So it was the lonely tree, so lonely and dead, exposed to the branches, that had me thinking on my car ride home, of nature’s impact on us and, in turn, our impact on nature.

Anatomy and Sexuality, A Child's Guide

Mom mother found them in bed together.
And that is how the love affair of Ken and Barbie ended. Their questionable situation marked their separation and a brief lecture from my mother, instructing my two younger sisters and I that Ken could not spend the night at Barbie's house because they were not married. The three of us were very young and did not understand sex. We knew that Ken was a man and Barbie was a woman. And men and women showed affection by having sleepovers that involved a lot of kissing...a fact of life the television taught us. (I am certain we learned it from a daytime soap our babysitter watched).
In any case, Barbie was now newly single and hot. Nothing was going to hold this girl back, even if there were no men left in doll land. We, the eager matchmakers, set off to find her a suitable partner....and find, we did. It was a joint effort, one of us three had to have made the initial suggestion. We sacrificed one of the girls. She wasn't a knock-off doll, but another Mattel prototype. She had a flatter chest than Barbie. And thinner hips and thighs. A sort of bulimic Barbie. I think that is how she was nominated for her new role.
Happy to have found a partner for Barbie, we quickly put in the necessary efforts to make her, shall we say, more attractive for their first meeting. One of us fetched the scissors, another took them and cut off her long, blonde locks...all to the roots. God may have created man and woman. But we created Stickshave.

Yes. That was her name. She (or he) became Barbie's loving companion, life partner. And when her head popped off, perhaps in a lover's quarrel, we invented another: Stickshave #2. Not long after this, a new man moved into town--my mother's doing--She finally gave in and bought us a new Ken.
But long has lived the memory of Stickshave (1 &2)--faithful lover and friend.

There in no one place by which I define myself.

Autumn in NE
The place that I want to be but have not been in more than a few years is New England. But not any one place in New England. No. A particular place is not important. Time is of importance; it is when I want to be there. The place I feel most comfortable, most at ease and peace is in New England in the fall. It has no significance in the course of history or of any literature I have read. It is a personal history, and people do not understand the pleasure of being there at the time, until they have experienced it for themselves. Tourists have the notion that it is all a matter of color. How fascinating the colors glow to bright ambers and reds over hills, along highways from Connecticut to Vermont. It is not the color. Sure, color is significant. But it is the smell of the place, the smell of the earth and of the air and the peculiar slant of the sunlight during the season that tugs strangely at my heart. It is the same feeling I have when I walk into my favorite used bookstore in Boston and explore the antique pages, rows and rows of glided, cloth, and leather bindings. Somebody, sometime ago, appreciated as I do now. I have to bury my nose into the open page to find its worth. There is a sense of history, the presence of time, of aging, of wisdom. Smelling is a good as seeing and all is feeling. New England in the fall is good at any place, so long as I am there. Sometimes I am reminded of it in small instances, by the sunlight as it creeps through trees on a given Carolina day, or a song on the radio. It is an unwinding; comforting, like being tucked into bed for a long night’s sleep.

Mount Monadnock Summit
It is small summit. That is what is likeable about the climb; it is accessible to most anyone, a beginner, but enjoyable for the seasoned hiker. I did not love it at first, but I did not love outdoor activities much. It was during the summers of my late teens that I had my love affair with Mount Monadnock. I always took the white dot trail, past the spring, from the wooded area to the rocky, last stretch. Flat, then steep, then a dip down before heading to the summit. It was the descent before the summit that fooled me each time. After heading through that pre-summit point, which was again green and shadowy like below, I would emerge into bright sunlight, which reflected off the white and grey stone. There I would gain a burst of energy that would propel me to the top.
It was beautiful at the top, as is usual at summits, though seemingly ordinary. They say you can see Boston on a clear day, but I never really needed to validate the fact for myself. My body was worn from the climb, still drenched in sweat. I would survey the area, a swell of pride at my accomplishment, a surge of adrenaline passed. The wind was wild most days. On a warm day, I would suddenly feel cold. It was perfect, always perfect even in the rain, or a night, or on a hot, muggy afternoon. I would rest a while against the rocks. They were so accommodating. I suppose it would not seem right to liken the rocky crannies to a sofa (for obvious reasons). It just always seemed inviting, comforting. I would stay, warm and dry in the light of the sun, eat and then fall asleep before the long descent.

My Front Porch
I live in South Carolina now. South Carolina, I am certain, is misunderstood by the rest of the states. As a Northerner, I know I had my preconceptions. Southerners are slow—slow to move, slow to talk. But it is this slowness that is lovely. In three years, I too have learned the art. I am a novice at this way of life and, by my own admittance, I have learned it is easier with the oversized rockers on a front porch, looking out into a pasture of cows. My neighbors, the cows, are browns and blacks and tans; some are spotted. There is a bull, much larger than the rest. They move calmly across the field, slowly, quietly. The scene is hypnotic, like watching from shore, sailboats gliding across the water.
This scene is familiar, used in ad campaigns for lemonade, but it is not overrated. Sometimes the sun is shining and the breeze is refreshing, sometimes the air is thick and heavy. I spent a night recently dining on my front porch while it poured rain. South Carolina is enchanting and I have found it enchanting for reasons different from New England. South Carolina has an ancestry of rugged and industrious peoples. People fought, died and lost defending this land, their beliefs and their way of life. Their spirit still haunts the landscape. And it is because of this that the South is charming as much as it is resentful. From the hanging mosses to the charm of Charleston to my front porch, there is so much here to explore, but so little I will ever understand.

A Relationship with Words

I have never blogged before and I took great pride in this fact. Until now, I have not subscribed to any online communities. I have taken great steps to avoid the MySpace and Facebook craze. Co-workers and friends have urged me a number of times to set up an account...but I just haven't been able to commit to the idea of revealing myself to the world.
I am not a private person...it is just the opposite. Most of the time I say too much...or the wrong thing. I am not comfortable with the fact that this tendency may be forever recorded on the World Wide Web. (I have witnessed this mistake from many a MySpacer).

But, alas, here I am...and all for a grade...I am a sell-out. Really.

I cannot remember when I first began keeping a journal. I want to say that it started as a prayer-type journal when I was a goodlittlegirl, which progressed into pre-teen hyper-babble, and later into sometimes intense reflections on self and the world I observed. I can tell you that I have not written in a journal in the past five years, when the person I lived with decided to--literally--take my word for it, reading passages I had written--only to use them against me later. I haven't had the courage for self-disclosure since, despite the beautiful leather bound journal my sister bought me two Christmases ago.