Flashback.

 

This is Wikipedia's stock photo of Sidgwick Hall. Enter the main doors in the picture, and on your right you will find a full-length wall mirror. Continue forward, and you run into the bathroom with the push-button shower. Take the left hall from the entrance. My room was on the right side, three or four doors down.

 

I remember myself wandering across a dimly lit courtyard at midnight to enter a red-and-white roulette lounge at Queens' College in Cambridge at age fifteen. I wore a black-and-white strapless party dress with a thin black lace shrug, impossible heels, and smoky black eye makeup. My nineteen-year-old date had a blue Mohawk and got plastered within a couple hours of my arrival, so I spent most of the night alone. The live band on the dance floor sucked (think Shania Twain playing original pop/rock), so after wandering through poker games, snacking on marshmallow fondue, and gazing into the river Cam from Mathematical Bridge, I ended up sitting on a grassy knoll outside the college in all my party finery watching two equally plastered kids run towards each other in sumo suits before making my way back to my one-room dorm in Sidgwick Hall at Newnham. My single-occupancy bedroom had a deceptive closet that opened to a sink and mirror as well as an English wardrobe and a small bed with a window that looked into the inner courtyard. I never went to church in England, though my best friend Alison, who lived across the hall, never missed her Catholic services and would wheedle me to join her every Saturday night before we went to sleep. Instead, I would sit and enjoy my Sunday mornings in bed curled up in white sheets with literature recommended to me by my gay creative writing professor who enjoys the distinction of managing to sport man-capris before the rest of Europe caught on.

Imperative.

I love Kurt Vonnegut, and I love short stories, so when I saw this never-before-published compilation of the late author's short fiction, I had to have it (despite a $27.00 hardcover purchase price!). And I was far from disappointed--all 251 pages were devoured within hours of its purchase. The illustrated collection includes 14 imaginative vignettes that, more than anything, showcase Vonnegut's talent for rough and real character development. His enigmatic style manages to infuse the end of each tale with the irresistible urge to scream, keeping the reader guessing until the last punctuation mark falls. The stories range from the fantastic to the dark, the touching to the chilling, each one thickly marbled with the trappings of Vonnegut's minions, Shock and Awe. I can't recommend it highly enough.

My favorites: "A Song for Selma," "Hall of Mirrors," "The Nice Little People," & "Look at the Birdie"

Excerpt.

I present to you an indignant quote (verbatim!) from a letter to the editor in today's Daily Universe (BYU's official on-campus newspaper):

"BYU dances are made in the image of Babylon with psychedelic strobe lights, darkness, and pulsating noise enough to make your body tremble."

(cue laugh track)
Seriously? No, seriously?

Check it:
1. The reference to "Babylon." Ah, Babylon, the ancient Mesopotamian city-state famous for the precocious development of psychedelic strobe lights. The author fails to mention, though, that the technology died with the Assyrian takeover; Sennacherib never mastered the Macarena and phased out the craze in favor of laying siege to Jerusalem. The downward social spiral continued through Nabopolassar and by the Chaldean era, no one would be caught dead with a rainbow flasher. Oh, you meant the reference as a second-century Biblical metaphor? MY bad.

2. I bet your only experience with the word "psychedelic" is as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle slang. That is, if you were allowed to watch them as a child. Admittedly, those pizza references walked the nutritional line. *twitch*TRANS FATS*twitch*

3. Darkness. Oh, so you'd rather watch your 30-year-old single male friends do the Funky Chicken to "Cotton Eye Joe" in the LIGHT (inspiration: Elna Baker)? Let's just keep upping the level of "morally offensive," shall we? Eleven IS louder than ten.

4. "Pulsating noise enough to make your body tremble." Props for imagery, man, because every time I walk into a Mormon-approved dance, I too feel like I've just been defibrillated.

Bitter & sweet.

This is baklava as it comes in the Arab world. To the left, you can see the edge of my favorite Arab dessert--kanafe (كنافة)!

(Image courtesy of Google ImageSearch)

One of the reasons I like Arabic is because it's essentially tough love. I'm so used to being put up on some shining pedestal by science professors that it's masochistically satisfying to spend one hour every day receiving criticism. The cracks these classes make in my ego cause me pain, but result in renewal, like I've finally discovered a way to let in some fresh air. And from a logical standpoint, a totally critical approach to language makes sense. If you never know when you're wrong, how are you supposed to improve? Despite my chronically perfect quiz scores, I'm wrong enough times in Arabic to even out my perfect scores in physics, math, and biology combined. Usually, my homework comes back scribbled all over in red pen, repaying me for all those times I've scribbled all over others' work in the same shade.

But today I got a compliment.

On my creative writing assignment, in which I described an alibi for why I could not have stolen the missing baklava (obviously an extremely thought-provoking and insightful piece), Dr. Bradford wrote "Very nice job! You've got great potential." He stopped me after class and told me the same thing--essentially, that my writing shows understanding and has the potential to develop into something great. I was thrilled. By default, I'm better at writing than speaking, regardless of language, and it makes me happy to see that ability carry over to my broken, elementary-school Arabic. Thank you, استاذ دوج. It's a relief to know that someone who knows their stuff has the confidence that with some work, mine might turn out all right.

Maybe.

In the spirit of الساعة الواحدة بعد الضهر , I revisit an old favorite:

Mad Girl's Love Song
Sylvia Plath

I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead;
I lift my lids and all is born again.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

The stars go waltzing out in blue and red,
And arbitrary blackness gallops in:
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I dreamed that you bewitched me into bed
And sung me moon-struck, kissed me quite insane.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

God topples from the sky, hell's fires fade:
Exit seraphim and Satan's men
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.

I fancied you'd return the way you said,
But I grow old and I forget your name.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

I should have loved a thunderbird instead;
At least when spring comes they roar back again.
I shut my eyes and all the world drops dead.
(I think I made you up inside my head.)

Bam.

In my Evolutionary Psychology textbook, there is a story about a species of frog with an interesting mate selection ritual. While a male frog is sitting innocently on a lily pad, minding his own froggy business, an interested female will silently sneak up behind him. All of a sudden, she'll burst out of hiding and bump into him, hard. Really hard. Enough to push him over. It's a test. If he flinches or runs away, the female moves on. She's seen what she needs to see. But if he doesn't budge, if he remains solidly unfazed by the situation, well, then he's a stable provider.

Sometimes I want to explode out of my silence and run headfirst into people--physically, emotionally, intellectually. I want to run into them so hard it sends them reeling. Or not. Because then it'd be easy to tell who the strong ones are.

Decisions.

"I felt dreadfully inadequate. The trouble was, I had been inadequate all along, I simply hadn't thought about it. The one thing I was good at was winning scholarships and prizes, and that era was coming to an end.

I felt like a racehorse in a world without racetracks or a champion college footballer suddenly confronted by Wall Street and a business suit, his days of glory shrunk to a little gold cup on his mantel with a date engraved on it like the date on a tombstone.

I saw my life branching out before me like the green fig tree in the story.

From the tip of every branch, like a fat purple fig, a wonderful future beckoned and winked. One fig was a husband and a happy home and children, and another fig was Ee Gee, the amazing editor, and another fig was Europe and Africa and South America, and another fig was Constantin and Socrates and Attila and a pack of other lovers with queer names and offbeat professions, and another fig was an Olympic lady crew champion, and beyond and above these figs were many more figs I couldn't quite make out.

I saw myself sitting in the crotch of this fig tree, starving to death, just because I couldn't make up my mind which one of the figs I would choose. I wanted each and every one of them, but choosing one meant losing all the rest, and, as I sat there, unable to decide, the figs began to wrinkle and go black, and, one by one, they plopped to the ground at my feet."

~ Sylvia Plath, "The Bell Jar"

Atonement.

I'm not a religious blogger (thank goodness). But I found and liked this poem, and I thought you might too. This is how I see religion, and yes, God. Physically, scientifically, explainably Real. I don't know the title, but it's by John Updike, an American Christian literary critic who died--whoa, Wikipedia--exactly a week from today, last year.

Make no mistake: if He rose at all
it was as His body;
if the cells' dissolution did not reverse, the molecules
reknit, the amino acids rekindle,
the Church will fall.

It was not as the flowers,
each soft Spring recurrent;
it was not as His Spirit in the mouths and fuddled
eyes of the eleven apostles;
it was as His Flesh: ours.

The same hinged thumbs and toes,
the same valved heart
that--pierced--died, withered, paused, and then
regathered out of enduring Might
new strength to enclose.

Let us not mock God with metaphor,
analogy, sidestepping transcendence;
making of the event a parable, a sign painted in the
faded credulity of earlier ages:
let us walk through the door.

The stone is rolled back, not papier-mache,
not a stone in a story,
but the vast rock of materiality that in the slow
grinding of time will eclipse for each of us
the wide light of day.

And if we will have an angel at the tomb,
make it a real angel,
weighty with Max Planck's quanta, vivid with hair,
opaque in the dawn light, robed in real linen,
spun on a definite loom.

Let us not seek to make it less monstrous,
for our own convenience, our own sense of beauty,
lest, awakened in one unthinkable hour, we are
embarrassed by the miracle,
and crushed by remonstrance.

~ John Updike

Gross.

If I told you I was going to run around hugging and kissing people regardless of gender and age like a sexually ambiguous madwoman, poke and sit on old people, wave my butt in the air to really obnoxious music, and sneak up on small children, would it be socially acceptable?

No. It would not be socially acceptable.
But a furry costume makes all of it okay.

Last week the university mascot came up to my family at a basketball game. It cocked its head to the side and gave my brother a high five. Without warning, it then launched itself into a flying leap toward our laps. Startled, my cousins and I grabbed handfuls of its furry legs to keep it from slamming its Sasquatch-esque body into the hardwood floor. Resisting our efforts, God's gift to cougarkind slowly rolled off onto the floor. "Um, you're falling," my young cousin said into its ear, the awkwardness of talking to a giant cougar as if it were a rational human being compounded by the fact that she was clutching its inner left thigh. It kissed my male cousin. Then it kissed me. Actually, it put its gargantuan head on my shoulder and pointed to his disproportionate cheek, triggering the overwhelming "kiss reflex," which has gotten me into the same kind of trouble at dance parties. I kissed it. Then gagged.


Why is this okay?
(pics courtesy of Google ImageSearch)

In other news, I was walking on campus today between the Marb and the Wilk, skimming the newspaper's cover story on why it is so notoriously impossible to pass Chem 105 and feeling rather happy with myself because I got an A, when I heard a sudden explosion next to me. My first reaction, of course, was to duck and cover like a cracked-out Vietnam vet, but it was raining (man, you never factor in the weather when you think about these kinds of things) and I guess my subconscious didn't want to get wet, so I did this kind of freeze/jerk/twitch-in-the-air thing. I hope it made the day of some depressed academe gazing out of a window in the Kennedy Center after writing yet another paper on how humans are instinctual animals and what we perceive as rationality is merely illusion. Anyway, me and the engineer kid who was walking behind me ran over to the nearest bike rack, where the noise came from, and it turns out that some poor sap's bike tire randomly exploded as I walked past. A fluke? I think not. It was like that scene in The Sandlot where Benny smacks the guts out of the baseball.
Something is going to happen. It has to be an omen. A good one.

News flash!

My roommate, the beautiful/domestic/athletic/smart/creative Amy Hayden, is officially engaged!

I was summoned home with text messages at 2 AM this morning to find all five of my roommates grouped on one bed, gazing starry-eyed at bridal magazines and honeymoon suite websites. And the ring is sparkly as the bride-to-be.

Congratulations, Amy and Dustin!
You are perfect for each other.
:-)

Theories.

One of the few things I wish I could sit around and do all day (while eating red velvet cupcakes, of course) is theorize about the most intellectually stimulating drama to hit television. Indulge me.

• Richard was on the Black Rock. In "Follow the Leader," he is seen building a scale model of the ship in a bottle. "The Incident" (part 1) shows Jacob + Mysterious Friend (later, Anti-Locke?) watching the same ship approach the island.

• "Dead is dead. You don't get to come back from that" (Ben). John Locke is dead. Christian, similarly, is dead. The man who swears to kill Jacob in the opening scene of "The Incident" has taken Locke's form (Richard notices there's "something different" about (Anti-)Locke when he sees him for the first time since the exodus), and since Alex (the smoke, now in the form of Alex? And Anti-Locke is conveniently out of the picture when Alex appears to Ben) tells Ben to do everything Anti-Locke says without question, and Anti-Locke is out to kill Jacob ("Follow the Leader"), Ben kills Jacob.

• Juliet is dead (e.g., she's not coming back). She fell on top of a hydrogen bomb. Sawyer's not going to take it well. I think he and Kate will get together at least once more before the series ends (but I think she'll end up with Jack...UNLESS she becomes one of the Adam and Eve skeletons from Season One!). And Ben Linus has to grow up and kill the Dharma Initiative. Whatever happened, happened. Therefore the Dharma peeps have to exist after the detonation. Maybe the detonation already happened. Or maybe the Dharma peeps died in the conflict over the hydrogen bomb, so they ended up dead anyway. But what about little Ben?

• I think we'll revisit the footage of Faraday crying as he watches the footage of 815 at the bottom of the ocean.


• Desmond's the constant. Faraday's the variable. Episode 4 of Season 6 is slated to be called "The Substitute." Algebra, anyone?

• Note character placement in the picture above. Locke, the Resurrected, is Jesus. Sayid, interestingly enough, plays Judas, and there's a skull at his feet. Who is he going to betray? (In keeping with the theme, is it Locke?) There's also a skull at Hurley's feet. Does this mean these two are going to die? (I hope not!! Though the last time we saw Sayid, he was bleeding from a bullet wound to the abdomen and saying, "Nothing can save me.") Kate is Mary Magdalene a la Dan Brown--maybe she will carry someone's child?

• Um, Ilana. Ties to Ancient Egypt? And Jacob? My theory is he's an Ancient Egyptian pharaoh who found a loophole to eternal life (explains the obsession with hieroglyphics!). "What lies in the shadow of the statue (which holds an ankh in each hand, the ancient Egyptian symbol for eternal life)?" Fun fact: Biblical Jacob is great-great-grandfather to Aaron. WE WILL FIND OUT, BEGINNING FEB. 2.

♥

Favorites: Ben, Richard, Desmond, Sayid, Sawyer (kill 'em, Cuse & Lindelof, and Fabio gets it)

Just sayin'.

You know, if you're not careful, you might end up alone in the Hogi Yogi parking lot at 10:00 on a Saturday night, eating chocolate ice cream in your car and listening to "Magical Mister Mistoffelees" on Show Tunes Radio because all your friends have boyfriends.

You know.
If you're not careful.



But then this song might come on and make you feel a little bit better.

"You've gotta have heart
All you really need is heart
When the odds are sayin' you'll never win
That's when the grin should start
You've gotta have hope
Mustn't sit around and mope
Nothin's half as bad as it may appear
Wait'll next year and hope
When your luck is battin' zero
Get your chin up off the floor
Mister you can be a hero
You can open any door
There's nothin' to it
But to do it
You've gotta have heart
Miles 'n miles n' miles of heart
Oh, it's fine to be a genius of course
But keep that old horse
Before the cart
First you've gotta have heart."
- Damn Yankees