Dumped and Deferred

So, it hasn't been the best week. I got dumped and deferred from my top choice school. I wish they hadn't happened so close to each other, because on some level, I think it'd be nice to have a loving boyfriend through this, but honestly, he wasn't all that loving (read: he was a total asshole) and I'm better without him, and I've got marvelously loving and supportive friends. So I'm being optimistic.

It would've been really nice to be accepted. Anyone could tell you that. But maybe this is for the best, too. It's still my top choice. Deferral is weird, because I'm disappointed, but there's a little part of me that's proud. One of the best schools looked at me and didn't say no. They didn't reject me. I wasn't the first application thrown out, and that makes me feel good. It's just a little more of the waiting game. But the waiting game sucks, so let's play hungry hungry hippos. (Simpsons reference, anyone?)

There is nothing wrong with aiming high. Nothing. I'm not crazy (well, not excessively) and I'm not wrong. Why shouldn't we aim high? Now I just have a few more essays to write and a few more schools to apply to. I'm determined. I'm not one to cut corners. Maybe I'll end up getting in, or maybe I'll fall in love with another, which wouldn't be the end of the world, because honestly, if the Admissions Committee at a school doesn't think I'll fit there, odds are, I probably won't fit there.

Metrophobia

I've neglected this blog for my Creative Writing course, so I figure I could share my quarter paper here. The prompt was to create a character that faces a certain phobia. Enjoy! 

The bell rings and I flinch, quickly, reflexively. I pack my books into my bag, slowly, hanging onto each second I have left before English. The rest of the class filters out, dripping into the hallway, flooding it with teens and hormones and Monday grunge and wet rain boots. I join at the end of the mob, trudging sluggishly over watery footprints.

The halls are mostly clear by the time I make it to the English wing. I pause, I halt, I wince outside the doorway. The poetry unit started last week. I had nightmares about the dissections. We tore apart each stanza, each line, with scalpels and teeth and ragged claws. We tied each word to a chair, squirming, squinting under a bald bulb, bruised and begging, and we made it spit out definitions it didn’t have.

Words cannot be cut in meter and verse. Words are marvelous, magical, infinitely deep. I can run my fingers over words, taste each one and let them melt on my tongue, press my ear against a sentence and listen to the endless echos within. But poetry slaughters. Poetry makes rules and rips and tears. Poetry ties the wrists of ideas together and throws them into boiling water, burning them down to nothing, while they scream, still living, still feeling.

I step back, recoiling, retreating. I can’t handle it, not today, not now, but the teacher sees me before I can escape. “Class is starting,” she says pointedly, accusingly, and nods to a chair in the first row. Painfully, I drag myself over to sit. On the board, in perfect, painstaking, penmanship is Emily Dickinson’s Hope.

"Hope" is the thing with feathers


That perches in the soul


And sings the tune without the words


And never stops at all.

“Read,” she commands. I do, slowly, stumbling. It’s abstract, it’s artsy, clipped and organized. “Now,” she starts, “what literary devices do we find in this poem?” She’s still staring at me.  I squirm, I fidget, and I’m trapped. My heart reaches out to hope, trapped between two quotation marks. The word is maimed, beaten and bruised, cuffed, strapped under markings, and stares up at me with sad eyes. Hope is not one thing with feathers, Hope should be everything, anything, uncountable. I stare into the pit of possible meanings, teetering on the edge of the cliff filled with broken words and fragments of chopped and bloody sentences. “Hope?” I say, and I hope, hope, hope she’ll let it go.

“No,” she chides, "Hope is not a literary device. However, personification, metaphor, and alliteration are all examples of acceptable answers.” And suddenly, the hope feels completely gone, and everything is clinical. Personification, metaphor, and alliteration.. My breath quickens. Personification, metaphor, and alliteration.  The words on the board swirl off into the air around me. Personification, metaphor, and alliteration. The hope is dead, a broken winged bird that was pushed out of its nest. Personification, metaphor, and alliteration.  “’S’cuse me,” I mutter, and I slide from my seat, making a dash for the girl’s bathroom down the hall.

I sit on the lid of the toilet so I can pull my feet up and wrap my arms around my legs. Comforting. I take a deep breath and lean my head back. Words don’t need places. Organization. Words don’t need surgery. Dissection. There’s a knock on the stall door. Interruption.

“The teacher sent me to get you. I know you’re in there.” A girl from class. A Dickinson fan. Her words are clipped, pruned, polished, perfectly placed. A place for everything and everything in its place. There’s a pause. “No,” I say.

She sighs, heavily, and I hear her lean again the stall door. “What’s your issue anyway?” I can’t tell her, because I can’t explain it, because I don’t have words, because I have too many words, because words don’t fit, words don’t mean what you need them to, trying to fit words in a sentence is like trying to pin insects to a corkboard. If you can get them to stay still, you’ve killed them. I shudder. She’s still outside, still waiting.

“Metrophobia,” I say. There. That’s a word. A heavy word. It carries all of me with it. “What?” she asks.

“Fear of poetry,“ I admit.

There’s another pause. She doesn’t believe me, she doesn’t understand. She tries again.

“I could probably tutor you, you know, if you want.”

If I could, I would boil down the thoughts in my head into words like her. I would tear them apart, rip off their wings, and pin them down. But I can’t bring myself to. They’re too precious, too infinite, with staggeringly vast meanings and inexhaustible choices. And I am meaningless, miniscule, teetering only on the brink of English language. She sighs again, and a few minutes later, I hear her walk away. I stay in the stall for the rest of the period.

That night, the nightmares come back. I dream of a bird, and at first it’s flying, soaring, free. Out of nowhere, there’s a gunshot, and it falls out of the sky, plummeting. I’m tearing through brush and trees and hills that seem to sprout even as I’m running, but I can’t get to it in time. They’re already plucking it naked, stripping it, ripping it to pieces and running off. Then there are birdcages, iron bars locking out light, and I realize I’m the one in the cage.  I’m in a classroom now, watching my words being written out on the board, everything I’ve said and everything I’m thinking. Students come up and cross out my words, one by one, and I throw myself against the cage, fighting, and I open my mouth to stop them, but I find that I can’t yell. Once they’ve crossed out every word, I don’t have anything left to say. Hope is just a thing with feathers. Personification, metaphor, and alliteration. I wake up, panicking, tangled in the bed sheets and covered in sweat. Panting, I touch my throat. “Words,” I whisper, my voice cracking, “words, I have words.”

The next afternoon is my first meeting with the school counselor. She wears a white blouse and dark slacks, all over-starched and perfectly creased. Her eyebrows are plucked too high, and she looks a sadistic, malicious, odious. I chew on a hangnail as I stare at her from the beaten couch the other side of the room.

“You’ve missed six English classes this semester,” she says, slowly, as though I don’t know, as though this is new.  I bite at my finger more, tearing away a sliver of skin. “You’re doing fine in all of your other classes. Could you tell me a little about English?” She stares steely at me. The world slows down to just this moment. I notice suddenly that she doesn’t move when she breathes. Either she’s holding her breath, or she can inhale without expanding. I say nothing, and she sits still. Waiting. She’s not going to move until I say something. Nervously, I wipe my spitty fingers on my jeans. “I don’t like poetry.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“It’s just, not my thing.”

“Is it difficult for you?”

“Well, not exactly.”

Her nostrils flare as she takes in a little breath and purses her lips. So she is breathing. Interesting. She drums her fingers lightly across her knee. She’s craving a conventional answer; she wants it simple and straight, in as little words as possible.  She’d be a good poet.

“I just, think it’s wrong, you know?”

“Wrong? How?”

I take a deep breath and try to steady myself.

“Like, if I wanted to tell you about something, I would use the words that best described it, instead of only using words that rhyme and beat together. It’s not really fair.

“Fair to who?”

“Fair to the words.”

Her eyebrows draw close. She didn’t expect this. She’s puzzled, flummoxed. She clears her throat with a tidy little “humph” and brushes her confusion under the table.

“Do you think that justifies skipping class?”

“I’m not comfortable with being in the room.”

“Don’t you think it’s better for a student to study than to skip class when they find things difficult?”

There she goes again, with the “difficulty thing.” It’s not difficult, no, how hard is it to commit murder? It’s a simple act. The problem is that it’s terrifying. The slaughter is wrong, it’s hopeless. She starts to launch into a speech she gives dozens of times a day, about how we can work together to find a tutor and do better in class, but I cut her off.

“There are students who skip biology when the class does dissections.”

“Pardon?” She asks. She’s off guard again.

“Some students aren’t comfortable with being in the room. And it’s ok for them to leave.”

“I’m afraid that isn’t the case here. Some students have specific issues-”

“I have issues with poetry,” I cut her off, but she’s beyond listening.

“-or they may fear dissections, or have conflicting religious beliefs. You’re not in the same situation. You’re skipping English class simply to avoid poetry.”

She’s accusing me now, spouting meaningless, worthless, useless things at me.

“I’m metrophobic,” I tell her. “I have metrophobia. Fear of poetry.”

She ignores this. “I know it may seem difficult-“

“It’s not difficult!”

“I don’t understand what you’re-“

“You don’t! Nobody does!” I’m yelling now, leaning dangerously forward on the worn couch, grasping at the edge of the cushion. “You don’t get it!”

The words fall from the air and stale quickly, turning the room fetid, rancid. She purses her lips again. The silence is long, much too long, and finally, she mutters, “Maybe we should take a break, and I can try to recommend someone a little better suited to help you.”

She stands, smoothing her blouse, and stepping briskly out of the doorway into the hallway of counseling offices. I hear her pumps click, hard snaps on the linoleum. I let go of the couch and lean back, caught by the cushions. Looking up at the ceiling, I sigh heavily. This feels ridiculous. Words drift in from the hall, and I can hear half of a conversation. The counselor has her control again, spouting her meaningless buzzwords, which limp, broken, back down the hall to me.

“…depression… frustration…needs help…try something else”

I recognize myself in her description. I close my eyes, pulling my legs up on the couch, and wrap myself small. I know someone will be here to pick me up soon. I’m relieved, in a way. Words are getting too heavy.

I skip the rest of the day, and I’m kept home Wednesday, too. “Just a mental health day,” I’m told. Maybe I am sick. The next day, the weather is still rainy. The whole world is hopeless and grey. I’m told I’ve been lucky enough to get an appointment with a psychologist who may be able to help. I slouch against the passenger seat, leaning against the cold inside of the rain-splattered window. I don’t know how I got out of school again today. Every few minutes, my mom glances over at me. I think she’s scared I’ll disappear before we even arrive. They want to fix me, they want to help. I’m done fighting it. They’ll tie me up, boil me down, cut out my words one by one. How poetic.

The woman who greets us is young, prettier, softer. She shakes my hand and smiles at me. I don’t smile back. She leads me to her office. It’s modern, the chairs are sleek leather, even the lampshade matches the throw rug. She moves to a chair and gestures to one facing her on the other side of a dark coffee table. As I sit down, she tells me, “I don’t like poetry either.” This time, I’m the one caught off guard.

“Sorry, what?”

“That’s what you’re scared of, isn’t it? Poetry? Your mom told me you have metrophobia.”

“Then my mom also probably told you she doesn’t think metrophobia is a real thing.”

“Why do you say that?”

“That’s what I was told.”

“Is that what you think?” She tilts her head slightly, genuinely curious. She waits, calmly, patiently. 

“No, I think I’m really scared of it. “

“That’s fine,” she says, and settles into her chair. I fidget nervously, but she doesn’t seem like she’s going to say anything more.

“So, you don’t like poetry?” I ask.

She shakes her head, “Nope. Too many rules. I like poetry without rules”

“Without rules?”

“Yes. When you don’t follow a pattern, anything can be a poem. Even just writing down your thoughts,” she says.  “Sometimes, a poem can give a word even more power than it had before.” She takes the notebook and pen from her lap and holds them out to me. “Why don’t you try?” I stare doubtfully, nervously, at her, but she looks sincere. I reach out and take them. The notebook is completely blank. She doesn’t speak as I flip through the pages, testing. She really expects me to do this.

“Just try,” she says, “Write whatever comes to mind.”

 Slowly, I trace out the word “hope.” I pause for a moment. “Is the thing, that’s in a lot of things,” I write. I write more before I can stop myself. No rules. “Hope is everywhere. And sometimes it flies, and sometimes it sits or crawls or edges in where you least expect it.” It’s not a poem. Jut words, filling the entire session and page with hope, over and over, unlocking its cage and little by little, taking it back.

“Our time is just about up,” she tells me, interrupting me, startling me.

“It’s not much of a poem,” I tell her, offering back the notebook. She takes it and reads it, slowly, savoring each word the way I would.

 “It’s lovely. It makes a fantastic poem,” She says, puts it on the table, sliding it over to me.

“But you didn’t analyze it,” I point out, “How can you say it’s fantastic if you didn’t look for meter or rhythm or literar-,” I cough, choking on this. “Or literary devices?”

“Not everything needs to be torn apart to be understood,” she tells me.

“Isn’t it your job to analyze me?”

She smiles, “Sometimes, you can understand more just by listening and reading than trying to analyze.”

And I smile back. She tears out my paper and hands it over to me. I fold it in half, then in half again, smaller, tighter, but it doesn’t matter so much now. Even if someone took out their red correcting pen and crossed out each word, one by one, I would be words ahead of them. I have hope.

RV 8

We're homeward bound! I think we're in Missouri. Or maybe Illinois. I have absolutely no idea. Anyway. You can't really tell what's happening in the video, but basically, Mom was showing off her perfectly crafted s'more, and Duke ate it right out of her hands. Classy trailer camp stuff.

RV 7

Enjoy a very late boring slideshow, plus a pretty cool Indigo Wild tour.

RV 6

 

Let's pretend I posted this yesterday when I was supposed to. The pool was fun, I finally got a bit of a tan, and shed the nickname "Casper." Lazy day. Good day. Yay. o

RV Day 5

Happy half-way! We made it to Kansas. Let's talk about the video, shall we? I made the mistake of letting Kenzie and Sam take control of the camera for a bit, and they filmed me eating. I paid with my dignity, and learned that if I want anyone to think I'm attractive, never to let them see me eat. Also, apparently, Sam is attracted to raisins now. Interesting.

On another note, rip-sticking is my jam. Well, it was, until Sam turned out to be better than me. I can rip-stick uphill, and he can jump on from a standstill, so we're tied until one of us learns how to wheelie. Oh, and Kenzie grants you full permission to laugh at the end, but you should still cringe a little bit, if you have any sympathy at all.

Finally, Sam would like you all to know that he's named himself "co-editor" of the video blog. Lovely.

RV Day 4

Nothing happened today. Nothing I could get on video, anyway. Duke had slightly more excitement, he ate a cheese stick, stole a peach, and mysteriously coughed up an earring that I've been missing for weeks.

RV Day 3

I'm not blaming the wifi, tonight's video is late simply because it took me a while to make it. Fun stuff, though, yes? We learned how to empty the septic tank! Just a week left!

RV Day 2

After a pretty rough night, we made it to Pennsylvania to tour Carnegie Mellon, and then to Ohio to this lovely campsite/trailer park. It's a bit of an adventure, but maybe I'll get some sleep tonight. Note Kenzie at the end getting distracted by horses.

RV Day 1

I'm really sorry this is so late, I severely overestimated my ability to be able to post. I'll work on it. By the end of this adventure, I'll have this down to a science. Anyway, we're on our way, in the glorious Widrey.

RV Day 0

Oh my goodness, lucky you! You get to watch my vlog as I go on a marvelous, 10 day, college tour, full family RV trip! Today was filled with stress and packing. Can't wait for what comes next...

Concert

She's unquestionably talented. It's nearly cliche, the way her fingers dance over the strings, the way she dips and moves with the bow. The music is elegant, beautiful, perfect. She's an extension of the instrument, perfectly angled and graceful. All but her face. Her expression is straight, pulled taunt across her face. There's a dull fog of boredom in her eyes.

Suddenly, her finger slips, and her hand splays up, quickly, away from the neck of the violin. Just as fast, she recovers, and her fingers take their places again, with just a quick a break in the music. I glance around to see if others noticed.

The feelings in the room remain much the same, all except for hers. She smiles softly now, just to herself. In this moment, I love her the most.

New Blog

I've created a new blog!  I didn't want to ruin Organized Chaos with weird campy craft stuff and knitting, so I made a craft blog on the side. Go check it out!

For Old Times' Sake

how dare you
how dare you throw around so carelessly
an idiom you've already broken.
for old times' sake.
in memory of former times; in acknowledgment of a shared past.


there is no past i will admit to sharing with you.
i wanted to cherish the memories
but for as much as i did,
you destroyed them.
you rewrote the past,
declared you had other motivations
and never meant what was said.

you reached into the past,
and turned memories into weapons
accusations
and guilt

how dare you
for old times' sake.

Arts and Crafts: short story

The selection is nice, she thinks to herself. Surface area is multiplied in rows and shelves and displays. Realistically, it's just the same thing repeated, in different colors, with different labels, but the endlessness is calming. Her row is cut off from the rest of the world, as though everyone else has realized that there is something wrong. She doesn't notice.

Her entire world is in front of her, the entire world here, and slowly she works through each basket, each section, carefully choosing each color, as though the right color will be solid enough to fixate on and hold to.

She leans forward to run her fingers over the yellow felt in the bottom row, and the lanyard around her neck swings out with a jingle. She doesn't trust pockets. The lanyard is cumbersome and dowdy, but she carries with with a reassurance, something she's able to hold onto, something strapped into place. The yellow, looking closer, is too sweet, too washed out. She puts it back and stands upright again, the lanyard falling against her breasts. She tries again until she gets it right.

Walking to the front of the store, the path is still a lonely one. There are voices in other rows, but no faces. There's only one cashier, topped with harshly dyed hair, brassy in the store lighting. Her face was drawn on with a matching severity, but the aim was off, and the smudged makeup gives the effect that her face is slowly slipping off. 

She raises her penciled eyebrows at the girl's armful of colors, all perfectly selected. The yellow is now perfectly lemon. She scans the white over and over again, instead of each alone, which the girl is happy about, relieved she doesn't have to let go of the others. 

"It's two fifty," the cashier tells the girl, sounding bored and confused at the same time, as though if she had the effort to care, she might've wondered why. With one hand, the girl opens the pouch on the lanyard, and pulls out three crumpled bills. She hands them over the counter without making eye contact.

The two quarters clink in the pouch strapped onto the lanyard as she walks back outside, but now she grasps the bag instead. It's nice being able to hold onto something.

Poem: Marionette

each of his hands seems too big, 

but not for his arms, 

or for his chest,

or his legs or feet or head, all of which seem too big alone.

but not together.

the pieces never come together. 

they don't move together,

they move alone, like the cut limbs of a marionette

just pieces tied to someone else's hand.

his hands never connect to his arms, 

and no matter how big it all seems for each other,

he seems small, overall

and he seems alone.

and sad.

Poem: Birthday

a year passed. another orbit.
a circle around the sun.
hurtling through space and nothingness
exists my everything.

all it means is that i've returned
and for a day, i'm hurtling through the same space
i came into.

before that, i was still here
just split into halves
clinging to the fecund fragments of my parents
before that, in quarters of theirs,
cut smaller and smaller by the past.

if you trace back far enough,
i've always been here.
and when i fall apart into smaller pieces
the pieces will have always existed

we're older than the world itself.

Only Fingertips

Only my fingertips show.

It is spring today. I walk slowly up the hill, slow progress, following the leading shadow with my own footprints. The others lie spread on the young grass, sleeveless and shoeless, all still pale, like corn shucked prematurely.

The laces of my well-worn shoes reach to brush the fraying legs of my pants. Above, my legs are just suggested, just ideas that might have been, blurry shapes up to the hem of the sweatshirt, which replaces all shape with itself. The sleeves are too long, leaving only my fingertips. Only my fingertips show.

The breeze whistles softly through my fingers, as though my sleeves open to the mouths of empty glass bottles, held upside down, inviting resonance.

It looks funny. I know that. But being shucked invites all the wind at once. Being shucked allows too much. I prefer the wind in little pieces I can hold. Only on my fingertips.

Facebook

i figured out
why im avoiding it

by seeing
what i didnt want to see

and finding
what i didnt want to find

and now im sad
deflated almost

but i cant tell
if its jealousy
or disgust

Telling

I want to tell him, to show him what I have, what I mean, and what I'm made of. I pull his hand, pull him towards me and open my world to him. I throw open the doors and the shutters and the shades and it all falls out at once, having been stuffed too full for too long.

He laughs it off as the mess sinks to his feet. He kicks it around, like fallen confetti and streamers after a party, and my face sinks as it settles. With a hand on my shoulder, he tells me simply, "You're crazy."

And he means it well. He means it jokingly. He means it to collect the mess and put it away, hand it back to me. A dismissive, quick, analysis. Sometimes, he says it more to himself, though he doesn't know I think so. He notes it, tucks it away in his own mind's closet, which is probably neat and organized, with each bit sealed in boxes and taped shut. He might have a shoebox, reserved for me. About me. Maybe. Maybe it's filled with little notes. Crazy, they probably say, she's crazy. Buried at the bottom are the things he might not want to know. The lid is kept shut. But I wouldn't know. I've never seen it.

He doesn't understand. He sees a tangle of yarn without a beginning or an end to unravel. He sees letters that don't make words in languages that don't exist. He sees doorless rooms and staircases that don't go down. A past that won't be remembered and a future that doesn't have a chance.

Even now, I can't explain. I think in shades the rest of the world seems to be colorblind to.

Why I Haven't Blogged

The internet got too big for me. Walking outside, I looked up to find it towering above, having taken over the sky. I wasn't sure where it began, I just knew it overshadowed me, overshadowed everything, sat in every corner and crevice. So I left it. And I'm having a hard time finding my way back.

Magical Realism

Magical Realism. A literary or artistic genre in which realistic narrative and naturalistic technique are combined with surreal elements of dream or fantasy.

I wish it had never been named. A name has sharpened it, has refined its presence into solid crystals that shimmer, nestled in the folds of my everyday. I hate that shimmer. With every spark, I'm a bit farther away from reality.

As I stare out into the room now, the edges of my vision begin to blur, darkening, dancing. The ceiling slowly starts to melt down into the seats, like tear tracks down dry cheeks. I flinch and blink hard, promising myself it's just a blood pressure issue, a low resting heart rate, something else with a name I can hold onto.

For a few blissful moments, the world stays put. Then, ever so slowly, it starts to drip again. The streaks grow into rivers of colors I can't name. The colors turn into a memory, then a smell, a feeling, and back again. I don't fight it. I can't. I think I'm losing my mind.

Cleaning

The piles of junk and stacks of half finished books have sat long enough to start to stew in their own personalities. The lumpy mass of jackets thrown over the rocking chair has grown to be motherly and comforting, while the torn, faceless book on the nightstand is a jealous cynic.

I was determined to clean, to scour, to renew. I thought I'd feel better then. But I couldn't bring myself to trash memories, so I stored them.

Faces trapped under frames were shut in cardboard tombs, and stacked in the closet. Too far away to keep up, too soon to throw away. In the picture, she's still my best friend. In the picture, he still loves me. In the pictures are the people I know.

As the stacks shrink, the room falls off balance, as though the empty space is yearning for exactly what it's not. The dizziness and distortion are overwhelming, and I sit amidst the personalities of trash, and the ghosts of personalities in pictures, knowing that really, there's nothing there at all.

Book Flask

The first few words bead on my chapped lips, and I lick them off hungrily. As words become sentences, sentences phrases, and phrases ideas, the droplets grow to a steady stream. I gulp at them hungrily, letting the surfeit dribble down my chin.

The flavor lingers after I've shut the book, sitting heavily in my mouth and mind. Instead of being swallowed and finished, it has soaked into everything it touched, and now leaks slowly out. I'm soggy and full, like a sponge having absorbed to the utmost.

My foggy, drunken mind remains caught between reality and fiction, struggling to pull back to the former. The story is disturbing, a dark and heavy flavor, and I'm caught beneath it. Drowning under someone else's fictitious weight.

Who Knows?

I haven't written lately. Well, I haven't written here. I'm trying to write something else. But it's not working. Maybe I'll end up here again. Maybe I'll finish it and share it here. Who knows?

Adventures in Having a Boyfriend

The AT&T store might as well have had me plugged into the wall with the other blinking lights warning low battery. I shift my weight back and forth and chew on my lip, begging for some distraction to make the clock move again. It's an eternity of waiting. Bored, I flick open one of the demo phones on the wall, and watch as it springs to life. It's dazzlingly bright, flashy, bragging to sell itself. I hit another button on the keypad. Surprisingly, it dials, and waits patiently for more numbers. Slowly, with my weary mind, I realize that the phone has a data plan and a number. Fully functional, just strapped to the wall.

I look over my shoulder, checking that every employee is busy with a customer, and dial his number. Pausing, I look around again, and hit "send."I see it rings, briefly, and he picks up. I hang up.

I smile to myself and start to turn away when I notice the next phone. Another phone. Another number. Faster now, I dial again, and call. He picks up. I hang up. And repeat. I move down the line quickly, invisible to the rest, dialing and hanging up, over and over again.

I'm nearly to the last phone in the row, when a loud beeping interrupts the whole store. Startled, I turn, and realize it's the first phone. As I step nearer to it, I recognize his number, calling back. I'm no longer invisible, as the volume is turned up to the highest. Stupidity. The ringing is following slowly down the line of phones.

At this point, my mother comes over and asks what's happening. Rushed, I explain who's calling and why. With a laugh, and to my horror, she picks up the nearest phone, which happens to be the one ringing. "Hello?" she singsongs into it. Even standing where I was, I could hear his angry frustration pour out from the tiny flip phone. "This is your girlfriend's mom," she answers to one of his threats, "here she is," and hands it to me. Laughing, I say hello. He sounds horrified.

"I think I just told your mom to go to hell."

Super Simple Action Plan

For information on tracking, you can find SOPA on this page, and PIPA on this one.
SOPA is currently in committee, which means it could still be tabled and killed for good, or could pass. PIPA has just passed committee, and is up for vote in the Senate on January 24.

Help kill these bills. Email your senators, look up their contact information on senate.gov.
Take another step, and email your representatives,look up their contact information on writerep.house.gov.

The emails I've sent have gone something like this:

I'm writing to you about SOPA and PIPA.

As a student, I'm an avid consumer and user of the Internet, and I oppose the Stop Online Piracy Act and Protect Intellectual Property Act in their current forms. I know it's important to protect copyrighted material online, but these bills are flawed.

Congress should focus not just on the goal of protecting copyright owners, but also on protecting the speech rights of consumers, like me, who are reading and producing wholly non-infringing content.

Please set aside these bills in their entirety or reformulate them to protect my rights.

Thank you for your time.

By the way, if you're in Connecticut, like me, both of your senators are currently sponsoring PIPA. Go do something to change that.

Blog Rambling

It's not really smiled upon to butt into random conversations with fun facts, but lucky for me, it's totally acceptable to post random fun facts on a blog.

Today, I overheard someone say "A tumblr is an online blog," which made me cringe slightly, like when I hear "ATM machine."

Firstly, a tumblr is not a blog, unless you write your own blurbs or take your own pictures. By definition, a blog contain's the writer's, or group of writers', thoughts, experiences, collected information, etc. If it's all someone else's work, and not original, I wouldn't call it a blog. Though, I suppose if you collected a theme  and put in effort to keep things in that theme, it may be technically "collected information" or something.

Anyway.

"Online blog" is redundant. The word "blog" is short for "web log," or a log on the web. If it's not online, it's just a log.

Weblog. Isn't that cute?

It may not always be so; and I say

It may not always be so; and I say
That if your lips, which I have loved, should touch
Another's, and your dear strong fingers clutch
His heart, as mine in time not far away;
If on another's face your sweet hair lay
In such a silence as I know, or such
Great writhing words as, uttering overmuch,
Stand helplessly before the spirit at bay;

If this should be, I say if this should be --
You of my heart, send me a little word;
That I may go to him, and take his hands,
Saying, Accept all happiness from me.
Then I shall turn my face, and hear one bird
Sing terribly afar in the lost lands.

I stumbled on this poem by ee cummings. This strikes me as so sad and beautiful that I just wanted to tack it up here. 

Be Italian

She's spewing something about my heritage. How I don't know it and don't appreciate what she went through. How I don't know anything about her. I don't point out that she asked me what my middle name was this morning, which I figure is something a grandmother should know, so admittedly, I'm indifferent to learning anything I should know about her. She rambles on about how her grand-kids should know her story to carry it on, about her 17 cousins and nephews and nieces and so on, none of whom I've ever heard of before.

As she babbles hysterically, I just stare, a tad accusingly. And all I can think is "Gee. It would've been really nice to know some of this in third grade, and not get a check minus on that family tree project."