Sunday, December 28, 2008
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Put your letters away. Let go all of your pieces.
So it snowed. And is snowing. Excellent. Some storm has dumped nearly a foot and a half of ever-precious powder on my doorstep, ripe for the games of childhood and nostalgia. I love snow. It's the only weather I enjoy more than the month of June.
So KJB came to get me, we went looking for a sweater for my dress -- and failed, go figure -- then just as we were getting back to my house, the storm began in earnest. I was certain the threats of network news weathermen were overblown and fourteen inches smacked of hyperbole to mine ears. Hey, you've met my dad, haven't you? KING of hyperbolic exclamations. I love him.
And it is still snowing now. Through the night, through the day. It's been over twenty-four long hours now and we've shoveled more snow that I ever expected to shovel in such a short period of time. We also took a moment to play in the snow. Oh! We rode on the ski-doos, with Bush and Preston. They even let us drive them around the block, which was terrifying and exciting, and wonderful, and breathtaking all at once. Made snow angels, pressed our faces into the mounded snow on the porch railings, observed the eye of the storm ("I can see stars. Do you think it's over?") threw snowballs at Zevon, carved the deathly Hallows into the fluff on her windshield. Then we went inside and drank cocoa, watched Ordinary People -- which, coincidentally, Robert Redford directed but is not in -- and decorated cookies. My favorites are the gruesome ones. Decapitated Rudolph, the armless ginger, the headless ginger.
Question: is a ginger still a ginger if his head gets eaten?
It was lovely. It's that kind of night that I'll miss when I'm in Scotland, but I'm sure I'll have entirely different awesome times. (Dad just came home and thought I had a friend over. "Whose jacket is that?" he asked. "The leopard skin one," he says. Haha.) So now I'm sitting with a mug of hot chocolate made the special way, listening to Catie Curtis, cuddled up in a blanket eating an eggplant pizza from Mike's, with my antler headband on. (Anyone who has worked the Jayce with me on Christmas Eve knows the headband all too well. I think it's why Stephanie and I became friends in the first place.) And I'm happy, warm, comfy, and so content. It's lovely.
So I've decided that I'm probs an Eskimo. All my best writing has been about snow. And I love snow.
From an email dated Monday, January 14, 2008:
"Half-melted candles are burning in enormous hurricanes on the windowsills. The curved glass doubles and elongates the flame, which flirts shamelessly with its own reflection like a middle school girl before a dance or her best friend's bar mitzvah and I sit entranced. Any moment now the heavens will open and the storm will begin. I cannot wait. I think of you more often than I care to admit.
If I could will the snow to fall, I doubt it would ever end.
I should go to bed; the snow will not begin until I'm asleep. Sweet dreams."
From an email dated Wednesday, February 13, 2008:
"It started snowing while I cooked dinner and half an hour later, as we walked toward the 'erotic poetry reading' (mostly bad attempts at performance art and girls in corsets or thigh highs making those present uncomfortable by proclaiming their as-yet unknown desire for a one-night stand with the evening's organizer... he responded, I suppose, as gracefully as could be hoped, but she still left the room after he read his poem, which decidedly did not ask her for the same) the snow lay half an inch deep. Light stuff, drifting but not relucant, still and flat but glittering like the remnants of a tacky Christmas card. I danced as we trudged across campus in the purple-golden glow -- royalty never knew such colors! -- and knocked my knees together in the sheer exuberance of the moment. If someone had given me a shovel and a pair of boots, I could happily have cleared the walkways of the three inches that fell while we listened to bad poetry and platonic crushes on gay boys met their ends all thanks to a sweater vest, a large triangle of orange chest hair, costume jewelry, and the impression that he had been drunk and unshowered since I last saw him in November. The snow continues to fall, a perfect chemistry of water and cold, the sort of snow that skiers dream about cutting into first.
By the time I wake up, it is scheduled to have turned to freezing rain, the process begun before I even lay my head beside my pillow tonight. There will be no snow day. I will work my way from class to class through a storm of wet with no redemption but the knowledge that last night, for a moment, the snow was perfect. I cannot regret the rain that ruins my schoolbooks and climbs the leg of my jeans, even as it whisks the soft and still snow away from all but memory. Without this rain, there would have been no snow and I'm learning, slowly, but my god I am learning.
'You pray for rain, but you don't want it from a storm.' -A. Cohen.
I am trying to appreciate things for what they are and not mourn the things that are not or that have ceased to be, and to not anticipate things that make come to pass. Nothing in life is a promise but that we die. In the meantime, it will snow and rain and the sun will cut slices into the wind that wreaks havoc on uncovered skin -- a nose, a pair of forsaken ears, perhaps -- of this alone I am certain.
I am going to work now. I will sit pressed against the window, watching the last of the snow fall with the glass frozen against my forehead and my feet resting on the radiator. I'm not asking for anything from the snow. It is enough for me that it exists for a moment. What right have I to ask it to remain?
Sweet dreams."
So, yeah. Total Eskimo. Then again, that might not have been entirely about snow. Context is unimportant when the sky is that heavy color of a bruise just about to turn. I never understood why people say snow is silent. It always seems to whisper as it falls, sweet secrets, sweet nothings, pure unadultered sweetness as it drifts and meanders.
Anyway, some pictures from last night?
So KJB came to get me, we went looking for a sweater for my dress -- and failed, go figure -- then just as we were getting back to my house, the storm began in earnest. I was certain the threats of network news weathermen were overblown and fourteen inches smacked of hyperbole to mine ears. Hey, you've met my dad, haven't you? KING of hyperbolic exclamations. I love him.
And it is still snowing now. Through the night, through the day. It's been over twenty-four long hours now and we've shoveled more snow that I ever expected to shovel in such a short period of time. We also took a moment to play in the snow. Oh! We rode on the ski-doos, with Bush and Preston. They even let us drive them around the block, which was terrifying and exciting, and wonderful, and breathtaking all at once. Made snow angels, pressed our faces into the mounded snow on the porch railings, observed the eye of the storm ("I can see stars. Do you think it's over?") threw snowballs at Zevon, carved the deathly Hallows into the fluff on her windshield. Then we went inside and drank cocoa, watched Ordinary People -- which, coincidentally, Robert Redford directed but is not in -- and decorated cookies. My favorites are the gruesome ones. Decapitated Rudolph, the armless ginger, the headless ginger.
Question: is a ginger still a ginger if his head gets eaten?
It was lovely. It's that kind of night that I'll miss when I'm in Scotland, but I'm sure I'll have entirely different awesome times. (Dad just came home and thought I had a friend over. "Whose jacket is that?" he asked. "The leopard skin one," he says. Haha.) So now I'm sitting with a mug of hot chocolate made the special way, listening to Catie Curtis, cuddled up in a blanket eating an eggplant pizza from Mike's, with my antler headband on. (Anyone who has worked the Jayce with me on Christmas Eve knows the headband all too well. I think it's why Stephanie and I became friends in the first place.) And I'm happy, warm, comfy, and so content. It's lovely.
So I've decided that I'm probs an Eskimo. All my best writing has been about snow. And I love snow.
From an email dated Monday, January 14, 2008:
"Half-melted candles are burning in enormous hurricanes on the windowsills. The curved glass doubles and elongates the flame, which flirts shamelessly with its own reflection like a middle school girl before a dance or her best friend's bar mitzvah and I sit entranced. Any moment now the heavens will open and the storm will begin. I cannot wait. I think of you more often than I care to admit.
If I could will the snow to fall, I doubt it would ever end.
I should go to bed; the snow will not begin until I'm asleep. Sweet dreams."
From an email dated Wednesday, February 13, 2008:
"It started snowing while I cooked dinner and half an hour later, as we walked toward the 'erotic poetry reading' (mostly bad attempts at performance art and girls in corsets or thigh highs making those present uncomfortable by proclaiming their as-yet unknown desire for a one-night stand with the evening's organizer... he responded, I suppose, as gracefully as could be hoped, but she still left the room after he read his poem, which decidedly did not ask her for the same) the snow lay half an inch deep. Light stuff, drifting but not relucant, still and flat but glittering like the remnants of a tacky Christmas card. I danced as we trudged across campus in the purple-golden glow -- royalty never knew such colors! -- and knocked my knees together in the sheer exuberance of the moment. If someone had given me a shovel and a pair of boots, I could happily have cleared the walkways of the three inches that fell while we listened to bad poetry and platonic crushes on gay boys met their ends all thanks to a sweater vest, a large triangle of orange chest hair, costume jewelry, and the impression that he had been drunk and unshowered since I last saw him in November. The snow continues to fall, a perfect chemistry of water and cold, the sort of snow that skiers dream about cutting into first.
By the time I wake up, it is scheduled to have turned to freezing rain, the process begun before I even lay my head beside my pillow tonight. There will be no snow day. I will work my way from class to class through a storm of wet with no redemption but the knowledge that last night, for a moment, the snow was perfect. I cannot regret the rain that ruins my schoolbooks and climbs the leg of my jeans, even as it whisks the soft and still snow away from all but memory. Without this rain, there would have been no snow and I'm learning, slowly, but my god I am learning.
'You pray for rain, but you don't want it from a storm.' -A. Cohen.
I am trying to appreciate things for what they are and not mourn the things that are not or that have ceased to be, and to not anticipate things that make come to pass. Nothing in life is a promise but that we die. In the meantime, it will snow and rain and the sun will cut slices into the wind that wreaks havoc on uncovered skin -- a nose, a pair of forsaken ears, perhaps -- of this alone I am certain.
I am going to work now. I will sit pressed against the window, watching the last of the snow fall with the glass frozen against my forehead and my feet resting on the radiator. I'm not asking for anything from the snow. It is enough for me that it exists for a moment. What right have I to ask it to remain?
Sweet dreams."
So, yeah. Total Eskimo. Then again, that might not have been entirely about snow. Context is unimportant when the sky is that heavy color of a bruise just about to turn. I never understood why people say snow is silent. It always seems to whisper as it falls, sweet secrets, sweet nothings, pure unadultered sweetness as it drifts and meanders.
Anyway, some pictures from last night?
Sunday, December 14, 2008
Everybody needs a thrill, and you are that for me
"I put your picture on my windowsill."
Travel backwards with me, please. Another time machine moment. First day of tenth grade. Mr. Rozen's room, natch. Which is to say that Liam and Steve are there, but that's so whatever. Steve will ditch me last minute to join Liam's group and I have to do my stupid silicon commercial all by myself. Not where I'm going with this. Oh, god.
So. He walks in. (And I swear this is relevant. But I won't say how.) How had I missed him all of freshman year? That hair, those eyes, that smile. Needless to say, he proved to be even better once I got to know him. And that's not sarcasm. He's been on my mind since that day.
He made it worse when he signed my yearbook.
Which might seem totally irrelevant.
But how is a crush ever irrelevant? (Gosh, I'm cryptic.)
Loose ends have begun to knot themselves tightly and without chance of un-knotting. Which is good, especially since the knotting was a fairly painless -- even, dare I say, fun? -- experience. Usually that shit hurts. This just felt... comfortable. Which is, I suppose, how the whole thing felt, for the most part. This was the Semester of Comfort. Which I like.
And on Friday, I met with Professor Moss, whom I might be in love with FYI, so we could talk about Edinburgh. Which is to say my new favorite topic. She gave me some good advice: leave your bedding at home. Bring only two big sweaters. Backpack instead of suitcase. Helllllz yeah.
Do you know how much I'm going to miss that class? Experimental history, that is. HMoss and MSandweiss, two of the absolute best profs I've had the pleasure to work with. And Professor Sandweiss is moving to Princeton, which makes me think I should apply for grad school at Princeton now, as well as at Iowa. I don't want this class to end, seriously. I've never been this upset about a class being over.
Ok, bedtime. Rock on.
Travel backwards with me, please. Another time machine moment. First day of tenth grade. Mr. Rozen's room, natch. Which is to say that Liam and Steve are there, but that's so whatever. Steve will ditch me last minute to join Liam's group and I have to do my stupid silicon commercial all by myself. Not where I'm going with this. Oh, god.
So. He walks in. (And I swear this is relevant. But I won't say how.) How had I missed him all of freshman year? That hair, those eyes, that smile. Needless to say, he proved to be even better once I got to know him. And that's not sarcasm. He's been on my mind since that day.
He made it worse when he signed my yearbook.
Which might seem totally irrelevant.
But how is a crush ever irrelevant? (Gosh, I'm cryptic.)
Loose ends have begun to knot themselves tightly and without chance of un-knotting. Which is good, especially since the knotting was a fairly painless -- even, dare I say, fun? -- experience. Usually that shit hurts. This just felt... comfortable. Which is, I suppose, how the whole thing felt, for the most part. This was the Semester of Comfort. Which I like.
And on Friday, I met with Professor Moss, whom I might be in love with FYI, so we could talk about Edinburgh. Which is to say my new favorite topic. She gave me some good advice: leave your bedding at home. Bring only two big sweaters. Backpack instead of suitcase. Helllllz yeah.
Do you know how much I'm going to miss that class? Experimental history, that is. HMoss and MSandweiss, two of the absolute best profs I've had the pleasure to work with. And Professor Sandweiss is moving to Princeton, which makes me think I should apply for grad school at Princeton now, as well as at Iowa. I don't want this class to end, seriously. I've never been this upset about a class being over.
Ok, bedtime. Rock on.
Friday, December 12, 2008
All that's left to do is run.
26 days.
Bought my ticket on Wednesday. Should have been writing my finals, but I wasn't. Not sorry. I was rocking in the aisle to my inside song. ("People staring at me think I got a walkman on.")
It still doesn't feel real. I still feel like something HORRIBLE is going to happen and I'm not going to be allowed on the plane, or Scotland is going to call (yeah, all of Scotland... I said what I said) and say, "Sorry, 'Shley. We didn't realize you're a German child. Go home and click your heels, you Kraut."
I'm not even really German, so you know, that's not fair. It's been over a hundred years since any of my direct relatives even lived in Germany.
Which, yeah. I'm just being silly. Hell, I'm going to Scotland! For five months! I have the one-way ticket to prove it. Er, one-way e-ticket? Does anyone else hate that everything is digital now? I feel like my entire existence can be erased with the shwoop of a mouse. So long, see ya in the next life. Here's your hat, what's your hurry? I want the corporeal ticket, please and thank you. (Raise your hand if you were taught the meaning of the word "corporeal" by Hannah Bones' aunt? Yes. I suspected as much. Siriusly.)
Can we please address the fact that I used Taylor Swift lyrics as the title of this blog? Please? Because I am unashamed. And I know if Brian reads this it'll just be used to fuel late-night tent rants to Evan about how my taste in music essentially blows. (Among other minor grievances, but that's a story for a therapist, not a blog.) I really enjoy her music. It makes me happy, and sometimes sad, and sometimes angry. And sometimes utterly vindicated. Hey, I was a teen-aged girl once upon a December and I remember all too clearly the sentiments expressed by the song "Fifteen." (I should... I was feeling it, uh, yesterday.)
I'm getting really antsy. I have less than a week of work left before I'm home and I'm freaking right the fuck out. I don't want to do it. I just want to curl up in a sleepy ball until January 9th. At which point I will be on an airplane. 6:20 to Dublin, Aer Lingus, yo!
Anyway, bus to catch. Peace, love, anarchy.
What's the word?
Aimless.
Bought my ticket on Wednesday. Should have been writing my finals, but I wasn't. Not sorry. I was rocking in the aisle to my inside song. ("People staring at me think I got a walkman on.")
It still doesn't feel real. I still feel like something HORRIBLE is going to happen and I'm not going to be allowed on the plane, or Scotland is going to call (yeah, all of Scotland... I said what I said) and say, "Sorry, 'Shley. We didn't realize you're a German child. Go home and click your heels, you Kraut."
I'm not even really German, so you know, that's not fair. It's been over a hundred years since any of my direct relatives even lived in Germany.
Which, yeah. I'm just being silly. Hell, I'm going to Scotland! For five months! I have the one-way ticket to prove it. Er, one-way e-ticket? Does anyone else hate that everything is digital now? I feel like my entire existence can be erased with the shwoop of a mouse. So long, see ya in the next life. Here's your hat, what's your hurry? I want the corporeal ticket, please and thank you. (Raise your hand if you were taught the meaning of the word "corporeal" by Hannah Bones' aunt? Yes. I suspected as much. Siriusly.)
Can we please address the fact that I used Taylor Swift lyrics as the title of this blog? Please? Because I am unashamed. And I know if Brian reads this it'll just be used to fuel late-night tent rants to Evan about how my taste in music essentially blows. (Among other minor grievances, but that's a story for a therapist, not a blog.) I really enjoy her music. It makes me happy, and sometimes sad, and sometimes angry. And sometimes utterly vindicated. Hey, I was a teen-aged girl once upon a December and I remember all too clearly the sentiments expressed by the song "Fifteen." (I should... I was feeling it, uh, yesterday.)
I'm getting really antsy. I have less than a week of work left before I'm home and I'm freaking right the fuck out. I don't want to do it. I just want to curl up in a sleepy ball until January 9th. At which point I will be on an airplane. 6:20 to Dublin, Aer Lingus, yo!
Anyway, bus to catch. Peace, love, anarchy.
What's the word?
Aimless.
Saturday, December 6, 2008
I hear that highway whisper and sigh...
"Are you ready to fly?"
I'm leaving the country in just 34 days. Leaving Boston, my parents, my brothers, my family, my friends, my world. I'm going to miss ski season, my father's birthday, the boys' birthday, Michael's birthday, Grandpa Clogston's 80th birthday, Easter, the entire season of spring, and perhaps, most tragically, Saint Patrick's Day/Evacuation Day.
I've never not been home for Saint Patrick's Day. And it seems a bit insensitive to be all, "Woohoo! Today's the day Boston got rid of the English bastards and declared its freedom from King George!" Especially in Scotland. (They haven't had their evacuation day, yet.)
I'm also not going to be home for Inauguration Day.
And yet, I cannot wait.
I'm tired of standing still and letting my life happen, you see. I may be twenty-one, but I can still angst it like a fourteen year old girl in red corduroy pants and a bedazzled tee shirt. And while Amherst is a pretty little bubble in October, and a snow-covered dreamy little bubble in February, it's still a bubble. And a small one, at that. Wasn't it Todd Snider who sang "I've always thought there was something wrong with hanging around the same town too long"?
Listen, I'm not trying to say I hate Amherst or think Hampshire is a bad place to spend four years, because I don't and it's not. But if not now -- when? And yeah, I'm going to miss Mom's scalloped ham and potatoes, her broccoli and cheddar soup, and the way Boston drops 'R's like George Bush drops bombs, but I'd miss so much more if I didn't go.
Let's go back in time. Tenth grade. Mr. Davidson's class. AP European History. November 7th, yeah? As good a day as any.
Ben Jablonski stands in the hall of that beloved portable , leaning against the doorframe, clutching a gift bag in his sweaty senior palms. He must have known it was pure gold in that bag. It contained a book and a bag of Robitussin Cherry Cough Drops (my favorite). The book? How the Scots Invented the Modern World and Everything in It. (Purchase.) The joke being that I was obsessed with Scotland. In the David book, I underlined every instance of Bonny Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, that I stumbled upon. It was how Davidson knew I would do the reading.
Let's go back in time further, please and thank you. Let's say eighth grade, yeah? Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone is being released in a month, so it must be sometime in October. I look it up on this great website I've discovered, something called www.imdb.com? And what do I see? Oh, oh, oh, oh! One Mister Oliver Wood. Ladies, say it with me, now. "Big sigh." (Does no one else remember the audible audience gasp when Minerva fetched that keeper of our hearts from Defense Against the Dark Arts class? The way every fourteen year old heart melted on the spot? Because I remember it like it was yesterday.) Well. Sean Biggerstaff, my Oliver Wood, (stop laughing, Mom... Yeah, that's really his name. No, he really did play Oliver Wood. Yeah, Mom, I get it. It's funny. Okay.)
Anyway, Sean Biggerstaff. Le sigh. He was divine. He was everything an eighth grade girl could want. He was athletic (in the movie), he had an accent, he played guitar, he was older, and he had a self-deprecating sense of humor. Also, I imagined he could probably introduce me to Joann, that fairy godmother of my generation. He was cool! That he didn't really do anything for a long time after Harry Potter, aside from stage plays that I couldn't get my butt to, and pretend to be a badger, didn't phase me at all. I still carried a... Well, Sara can tell you. And Courtney remembers all too clearly what it's like to be obsessed with Scotland.
I mean, was it any coincidence that our dorms at summer camp were named Scot and Wood? Methinks not.
So between Sean "Stop laughing, it's only sort of funny" Biggerstaff, my ninth grade discovery of Trainspotting (and, consequently, Ewan McGregor without the funny Jedi knight haircut or the werewolf beard), and tenth grade's insistence that what we should really be talking about it Bonny Charlie, why waste our time on the Hapsburgs or Otto von Bismarc?
I've been ready to go to Scotland for a very long time.
In answer to your question, highway:
I'm ready to fly.
I'm leaving the country in just 34 days. Leaving Boston, my parents, my brothers, my family, my friends, my world. I'm going to miss ski season, my father's birthday, the boys' birthday, Michael's birthday, Grandpa Clogston's 80th birthday, Easter, the entire season of spring, and perhaps, most tragically, Saint Patrick's Day/Evacuation Day.
I've never not been home for Saint Patrick's Day. And it seems a bit insensitive to be all, "Woohoo! Today's the day Boston got rid of the English bastards and declared its freedom from King George!" Especially in Scotland. (They haven't had their evacuation day, yet.)
I'm also not going to be home for Inauguration Day.
And yet, I cannot wait.
I'm tired of standing still and letting my life happen, you see. I may be twenty-one, but I can still angst it like a fourteen year old girl in red corduroy pants and a bedazzled tee shirt. And while Amherst is a pretty little bubble in October, and a snow-covered dreamy little bubble in February, it's still a bubble. And a small one, at that. Wasn't it Todd Snider who sang "I've always thought there was something wrong with hanging around the same town too long"?
Listen, I'm not trying to say I hate Amherst or think Hampshire is a bad place to spend four years, because I don't and it's not. But if not now -- when? And yeah, I'm going to miss Mom's scalloped ham and potatoes, her broccoli and cheddar soup, and the way Boston drops 'R's like George Bush drops bombs, but I'd miss so much more if I didn't go.
Let's go back in time. Tenth grade. Mr. Davidson's class. AP European History. November 7th, yeah? As good a day as any.
Ben Jablonski stands in the hall of that beloved portable , leaning against the doorframe, clutching a gift bag in his sweaty senior palms. He must have known it was pure gold in that bag. It contained a book and a bag of Robitussin Cherry Cough Drops (my favorite). The book? How the Scots Invented the Modern World and Everything in It. (Purchase.) The joke being that I was obsessed with Scotland. In the David book, I underlined every instance of Bonny Prince Charlie, the Young Pretender, that I stumbled upon. It was how Davidson knew I would do the reading.
Let's go back in time further, please and thank you. Let's say eighth grade, yeah? Harry Potter and the Sorceror's Stone is being released in a month, so it must be sometime in October. I look it up on this great website I've discovered, something called www.imdb.com? And what do I see? Oh, oh, oh, oh! One Mister Oliver Wood. Ladies, say it with me, now. "Big sigh." (Does no one else remember the audible audience gasp when Minerva fetched that keeper of our hearts from Defense Against the Dark Arts class? The way every fourteen year old heart melted on the spot? Because I remember it like it was yesterday.) Well. Sean Biggerstaff, my Oliver Wood, (stop laughing, Mom... Yeah, that's really his name. No, he really did play Oliver Wood. Yeah, Mom, I get it. It's funny. Okay.)
Anyway, Sean Biggerstaff. Le sigh. He was divine. He was everything an eighth grade girl could want. He was athletic (in the movie), he had an accent, he played guitar, he was older, and he had a self-deprecating sense of humor. Also, I imagined he could probably introduce me to Joann, that fairy godmother of my generation. He was cool! That he didn't really do anything for a long time after Harry Potter, aside from stage plays that I couldn't get my butt to, and pretend to be a badger, didn't phase me at all. I still carried a... Well, Sara can tell you. And Courtney remembers all too clearly what it's like to be obsessed with Scotland.
I mean, was it any coincidence that our dorms at summer camp were named Scot and Wood? Methinks not.
So between Sean "Stop laughing, it's only sort of funny" Biggerstaff, my ninth grade discovery of Trainspotting (and, consequently, Ewan McGregor without the funny Jedi knight haircut or the werewolf beard), and tenth grade's insistence that what we should really be talking about it Bonny Charlie, why waste our time on the Hapsburgs or Otto von Bismarc?
I've been ready to go to Scotland for a very long time.
In answer to your question, highway:
I'm ready to fly.
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