almost a trap

Don't you know there ain't no devil, there's just God when he's drunk...

2010-02-18T16:53:00.000-08:00

Mace had always hated telling stories, sharing experiences, recounting the mundane details of his day to anyone. Things happened around him, not to him. He made absolute sure of that.

There was one exception to this rule, an exception that burned him from the inside out. Violet happened to him, over and over again from his first conscious memory of her through the beginning of the end of the world, when he left her until the exact second he looked behind him to see her stumble and fall, the crack of a gunshot piercing her shoulder, now a violent bloom of red.

In that moment he felt nothing but the burn of hatred – for the men who shot her, for the crowds that kept running, for Violet for falling. The fear did not come until he realized that she wasn’t where she had fallen. In the moments between when she had been shot and when he had forced his way against the tide of people to where she was, she was gone. And the soldiers kept coming.

He had no choice but to turn around and sprint away. As it was, he had wasted precious seconds just staring at the drops of blood on the floor, flashing in between the pairs of fee that dashed by. They seemed to exist as light spots behind his eyelids as he ran.

He knew what Violet would have done in this situation, had it been anyone other than him. She would have asked questions, issued threats, bashed heads. She would have done something. Mace didn’t do, he moved around doers and doing. He, in fact, didn’t.

The crowds dispersed into well known hiding places where they felt safe. Mace slowed to a walk. The buzzing in his head competed with the desire to sleep, to forget that the past day had ever happened. Violet’s disappearing act could mean that she was dead, or worse but mace was numb to the thought. He only wished that his head would stop buzzing, that his skin would stop crawling.

He looked up. There was a circle of men outside his crawl space – middle aged me, which was weird enough. They weren’t wearing gray Agency uniforms and they weren’t dead and that’s where most middle aged men went. He fought the sudden urge to antagonize them, to get himself killed. He suppressed it because he didn’t know what it was and he didn’t want it so he turned around and left, as quietly as he came.

His backpack was cutting into his shoulders. There was nowhere to go to sleep so he went to the nearest station, found an unused bit of wall to lean against and pulled out a book. It took ten full minutes of reading it before he figured out what the book was.

He had long ago perfected the art of being invisible. It was easy to go unnoticed in a world you tried your best not to touch. The one person who went for him found himself face planting in the cement floor by a quick twist of Mace’s feet. He didn’t look up but the knowledge that there was a stain of blood, that it would be red like Violet’s, made the buzzing start again.

The chaos in the station slowed around him. There is no night underground, but there was usually a few over lapping hours during which the majority of people slept.

So Mace attributed his lack of attention to a lack of necessity when there was suddenly someone sitting next to him. He saw the flash of gray in the corner of his eye. A curse spilled out of his mouth before he could stop it.

My sister graduates from high school this year...

2010-02-09T16:09:00.000-08:00

It's 2010. It's been 2010 for almost a month and a half now. I turned 21. My mother's birthday is today, but I'm not going to tell you how old she is because it would be mean. It's 2010 and I don't know what I'm doing with my life any more than I did last year. I'm still a college student. I dress like one, I eat like one. I probably think like one. I probably act like one...

(Side note: In a recommendation a boss of mine wrote for me she said that I could be a Jane Austen character if I weren't so well-adjusted. Just about everyone I know said that I'm not really well adjusted. I just am really good at faking it.)

Not much has changed. The census is this year. It is time to be counted. I've been writing again. Sometimes I do it when I'm supposed to be paying attention. Sometimes that's in politics class. What does it say that in the class that is supposed to be teaching me about what I want to do with my life, I can't stop writing about people and things that don't exist. Does it help that I do it in other classes too?

And now, for a presentation on the role of art in The Picture of Dorian Gray.

Through an examination of the way that Dorian Gray is treated as a piece of art throughout the novel, we can see the truth of these statements.

At the beginning of the novel there are two Dorian Grays – the one in the portrait and the real live breathing one. The portrait is two dimensional. It is all surface and symbol and no soul. It is also an interpretation, Basil’s interpretation and impression of Dorian Gray the person. Dorian Gray, the person, however, is Beauty personified. He lives and breathes. He interacts with the world around him and the world acts on him, but he is beautiful and people merely treat him as a work of art. For women he is clever and charming and beautiful and rich. For Lord Henry, he is a sort of experiment.

Once Dorian gives his soul to the painting of him in exchange for eternal youth it as though he is trying to become a work of art – an amoral symbol that exists only on the surface. Lord Henry encourages this. He calculates his statements to inspire Dorian to a life of pleasure and pleasure only. There is no good, there is only what you enjoy. Basil, at first, seems to see only the idea of Beauty in Dorian. Society, too, goes along with this idea of Dorian as simply Beauty.

Dorian however paves a path of destruction where ever he goes. He has no moral code, only a double life and a status to maintain. It is only when Dorian takes Basil’s life that he begins to fall apart. Humans cannot exist as merely amoral, beautiful symbols. They cannot be art. They act on the world around them, and the world acts on them. Though Dorian does not change on the outside, he does change inside. When Basil sees what has happened to the portrait he painted, he knows what is inside Dorian and is filled with an abject horror.

Dorian cannot exist as merely art, and he cannot die as merely art. In stabbing the portrait, he stabs himself, and when he regains his soul, he regains the appearance of one who has been as corrupted as he has. It is the act of annihilating another that undoes him. Despite his lack of morality and his lack of a soul, he cannot escape the manifestations of guilt and fear that plague him. When he attempts to destroy the work of art, the portrait, he destroys himself because he has become the portrait and it has become him.

We see this too with Sybil Vane. She is, to Dorian, a work of art. She is beauty and fictional characters and manifestations of Shakespeare’s ideals. When she becomes human, when Dorian creates in her these real feelings of love, she can no longer portray ideals. [“A great poet, a really great poet, is the most unpoetical of all creatures…he lives the poetry he cannot write. The others write the poetry they cannot realize.”] Dorian then no longer loves her. He cannot appreciate her as a person, but only as art, and that destroys her.

Humans are not supposed to be art. It is true that they have surfaces that can be beautiful personified, but there lies beneath that surface a soul and a heart and a brain. There is curiosity and love and fear and death and sex. There is action. In order to be merely symbols, we will annihilate ourselves. [see: suicide bombers]

Probability and Simplicity

2009-12-30T22:13:00.001-08:00

In An Abundance of Katherines by John Green, the protagonist puts forth the idea that relationships are predictable mathematically. That is, you can graph a relationship and figure out, based on the Dumper/Dumpee dichotomy, how a relationship will end. I think that the proposition is supposed to be ridiculous...and maybe it is. But I've sort of found that relationships do have a sort of predictability. Obviously I don't have a lot of experience to back this up, but we always seem to go for what's different. If you pathalogically fight with everyone, you'll go for the person that doesn't fight back, that gives you a raised eyebrow and a simple question when you try to shout them down. If you're quiet and meek and people generally look past you, you'll go for the person that pulls you out, that actively looks at you.

Of course, I haven't finished the book so I'm not entirely sure what John Green is getting at, so there will be more on that when I finish the book.

I just finished Suite Scarlett by Maureen Johnson and I have to say that it was pretty fantastic. Upon finishing it I didn't have the reaction that I usually do after watching movies/reading books/seeing tv shows about high school and adolescence, which usually goes something like this - "This person has obviously been middle aged their whole life. High school was nothing like this." Instead it was interesting and funny and real. Teenagers getting drunk wasn't the END OF THE WORLD. There was no "this is what I learned, so can I not be grounded" conversation. I thought that the main character was someone I could have known in real life. It wasn't heavy or self-conscious, but it still managed to say something about the complexity of decision-making when you don't even know who you are yet. And it didn't hit you over the head with anything.

Young adult literature can do that. It often has something to say that it slips in under your radar, something you don't even notice is being said, but makes you feel better once you've read it. It is empathetic, when done correctly. Satre doesn't know everything and you can't live your life based on Joyce and Nietzsche. This seems unrelated, but it isn't. Because I know literature snobs (whom I love dearly) who are miserable. Because they seem to miss this point. There is a kind of beautiful, paradoxical complexity in the simplicity of cartoons, young adult literature and McDonalds.

Of course, I'm not sure I can tell you what that means. What it means to me is that things stripped down to their barest bones are often easier to understand. There hard answers to Yes or No questions and that we won't get anywhere if we can't see that. Harry Potter presents us with what seems like the obvious answer to a question - is this worth fighting for? - and shows us the heroism behind it. For good people it seems obvious. Of course you fight for people who are oppressed. But there is a heroism behind that that is important to understand. From what I've read of John Green (Looking for Alaska and about 60 pages of An Abundance of Katherines) the dramas and tragedies of adolescence are important, however inconsequential they seem in retrospect, because they are what make us. We are a combination of the events we've experienced and the things we've learned, though they may be intangible and impossible to articulate.

McDonalds french fries and chocolate milkshakes are delicious and they might be awful for you, and contain all sorts of incomprehensible things that clog arteries and upset your digestive system, but that's not really that important. Sometimes its better to enjoy the simple things because complications create distractions. And that turns once beautiful things into irrational, improbable things that don't really exist.

I guess what I'm trying to say is that there is beauty in the little things that make the big picture. And that when you stare too long at the big picture, it starts to disintegrate.
This isn't to say that life can be broken down into its simplest parts. Life is in the gray and impossible to understand in its entirety. I only mean that perhaps, by looking at things simply (i.e. hungry people need food, sick people need doctors, slaves need freedom) we can reach the more complicated stuff (how to achieve all of these things, why people do or don't help, how we can get more people to help). Examining the existential, nihilistic, and abstract ideas that may or may not have built humanity, and which can never be used or proven, doesn't seem like a good use of our time. The meaning of life doesn't matter. What matters is that we're here, and we've got to do something with it.

(Disclaimer: I like obscure Russian writers as much as the next guy. Tolstoy is a personal favorite. Victor Hugo and I go way back. My next projects include James Joyce's Ulysses [for class] and Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged [not for class]. But its not life building philosophies or anything. I like to think i get something out of everything I read.)

Don't you ever get tired of saying its not Shakespeare...

2009-12-17T14:58:00.000-08:00

People give you weird looks when you say you love Harry Potter. They give you weird looks when they find out you listen to wizard wrock and read fanfiction and yeah, okay, occiasionally write it. They give you strange looks when you have two hour conversations about the Maurauders who were, at best, peripheral characters, and in some cases, parenthetical.

So why are we still talking about it? Why can't we let Harry Potter go?

There is something beautifully simple in the series. Not the characters, who are wonderfully complex and who explore the whole spectrum of humanity. J.K. Rowling's characters are easy to relate to. They are real. Our hero is not perfect. Those who are mean and bitter are not always evil. Those we like are not always good, do not always make the right choices. The story is occasionally hard to read and sometimes the wrong people die. The plot is most certainly not simple. Rowling weaved throughout seven books a series of intricate details, a web of memories and lies and truths and plotting and manipulation. When we reached the end of the series, not all of our questions were answered, not all of the problems resolved.

The simplicity lies in that there is something to fight for. There is a line in the sand that everyone in the series must step to one side of. What starts out as a simple story of a boy, mistreated, orphaned and unloved, finds himself in a magical new world, complete with its own villians and its own history. As Harry grows up however, we find that there is more to this new world. We find that Harry, as young as he is, does not choose to enjoy his childhood. His close friends do not choose to let him fight alone.

Perhaps what makes the Harry Potter series so great is that it is based on choices. From the very beginning of the story - the parts that we never really read - choices define the characters. They do not simply sit by and let things happen. We have James Potter, who was the only son of rich parents who spoiled him. He was a pure-blood. It would have been unbelievably easy for him to sit back and claim that Voldemort was other people's problem, that it had nothing to do with him. Instead he fought for the love of his life, sometimes against her, and in the end he died protecting his family, choosing to give up his life for the slimmest hope that his love and his son would survive.

Sirius Black could have listened to his family. He could have believed them and he could have been in Slytherin. But he wasn't. He was friends with James Potter and he chose to love his new, adopted family. And when the world he had chosen turned its back on him, believed the worst of him, he didn't give in. He stayed good, even when no one believed he could but himself.

Lily Potter chose James. She, after years of fighting him, we are told chose to love him. And in the end she chose her son over herself. She stood in front of him for almost no chance at all that Voldemort might spare her son.

Severus Snape was not a good person. He was mean and bitter and obsessed with what he couldn't have. He was stuck at age 15 when the smallest things are the end of the world. To the end of his life he retained his anger and his hatred. But he did not stay evil. He, in the end, chose to fight for good, to switch his side of the line and to put all of his energy and effort and lifeblood into making sure that Voldemort did not triumph.

Harry's life was defined by these choices. He was alive because of them, he loved because of them. Not because they forced him into any path but because he chose to learn from them, to take away the idea that loving makes you a better person. That just because the right choice is also the most difficult one does not make it any less right. And he does this by making mistakes. By relying on his friends who chose to stay with him, who chose to stand next to him and fight even when they might die, when they might have to watch loved ones die. And Harry, at the age of 11, when most of us barely know ourselves, decided that he was going to fight, that he would devote the entirety of himself to fighting Voldemort. Harry Potter chose a life that was full of danger and loss and grief on the chance that he could make the world better.

This story shows us a group of people who lived and loved and fought with as much verve as any of us could ever hope to have. They gave up everything to fight not just for what is right, but for the idea that everyone, every single human being has a right to their own existence, to live as freely and as happily as they possibly can. This story shows us that living means making mistakes. It means that sometimes you miss the bigger picture, and that your mistakes do not define you. We can always change our minds. We can always change our decisions and change sides. Harry Potter has taught us that we can always fight, we should always fight and that the chance of making the world better is all we need. Because if we aren't fighting for good, than evil is winning. Even if we are just sitting back and watching. Harry Potter taught us the price of passivity and the triumph of action. Harry Potter taught us that our choices matter and that we can and must choose to love.

Oy. Vey.

2009-12-04T17:43:00.000-08:00

The Twilight phenomenon seemingly came out of nowhere. One day, there were a million Facebook bumper stickers worshipping a mysterious Edward Cullen, and the world hasn’t looked back since. And really, what’s not to love? Edward Cullen is perfect. He is the boy that every girl wants, and every boy wants to kill. He is loyal and intelligent, with a spark of sarcasm and a dark secret. And he loves with abandon, without guard, reserve or arrogance. He loves wholly and completely and would stop at nothing to make the love of his life happy. And he’s a vampire, if you’re in to that sort of thing…

Of course, Edward Cullen is not the only reason to read the Twilight books, though he is certainly reason enough. In addition to a love that rivals the great epic loves of history, there are battles, super powers, evil, blood, and snarky teenage werewolves. Though the series cannot, by any means, be called Shakespeare no matter how well Bella and Edward’s love rivals that of Romeo and Juliet, it has depth. Twilight is a series about choices. Bella, a human, falls in love with a vampire, Edward, whose instinct is nothing more than to kill her, no matter how much he loves her. Waiting in the wings is Jacob Black, a shape-shifting werewolf from a Native American tribe who exists to stop vampires, and who loves Bella and who can give her a human life. She has to choose between them. She has to choose what she will give up to be with Edward. Their story is messy and complicated and real. Stephenie Meyer does a beautiful job exploring this, showing the complexities and unbelievable challenges that they will face.

So imagine our surprise when we read Breaking Dawn, the final installment in the Twilight series, and we find that Bella does not have to make any choices. She does not have to choose to become a vampire. She does not have to choose to give up her family. She does not have to choose to give up Jacob Black. She does not have to choose to give up even the ability to have children. She loses nothing. She makes no choices. Stephenie Meyer gave us an empty cardboard box for a final installment, filled with two dimensional characters defined by nothing but their ability to lament circumstances. There is no creativity, no allusion to the differences of Bella and Edward’s relationship, in Bella’s pregnancy or in Jacob’s imprinting on her baby. It was a cheap attempt to give every character what they wanted. Jacob’s imprinting was probably the worst because it ripped from us the last bit of truth and beauty – the inexorable intertwining of his overwhelming love for Bella and the indescribable pain that she causes him.

Stephenie Meyer killed her own story. She turned a beautiful, complicated, messy and inspiring love story into a self-satisfying, empty, spineless piece of nonsense, proving that her first three books were good in spite of her, not because of her. They were not of the highest quality literature, not by any definition, but they had something to say, and they said it well – not only as entertainment, but as the kind of book that gets under your skin and makes you think. But that was obviously not the point, so we, feeling used and betrayed, must condemn Breaking Dawn to the realm of things that do not exist. We have lost all respect for Stephenie Meyer – her first three books are now shaded and touched by the series’ cowardly ending. She has been brought to light as someone who is not an author. Authors understand that stories write themselves. Characters, once created, are not clay to mold. They might as well be living, breathing people for all the ability that we have to change them. It is almost as if we, authors, can only write what has already happened. But Stephenie Meyer changed the ending, and in doing so she took something from her characters, twisting them into mere shadows of themselves. We just have to be sure we don’t let her take the original story from us as well. Let Breaking Dawn go.

All marriages are mixed marriages - Chantal Saperstein

2009-12-02T14:08:00.000-08:00

Can someone please give me a valid, secular reason why homosexual people should not be allowed to get married? I have yet to find one, though I am more than willing to address some of the invalid reasons people have proposed.

1. Something about it corrupting the American family: First of all, just because you tell them they can't get married they aren't just going to suddenly go out, marry people of the opposite sex and have their 2.5 children. You're just going to keep them from the benefits that married couples have even while they live as all married couples do. Second - how about that 50% divorce rate. Don't you think that has more baring on the American family, corrupted or not? Isn't that much closer to illegitimating love and family? Why don't we just make divorce illegal?

2. It is uncomfortable and awkward for children to go to school saying that they have two dads or two moms. You know what else is uncomfortable for children? An affinity for reading rather than playing outside. Braces. Glasses. Parents with AIDS. Parents who are criminals. Living in a smaller house than your friends. Being unable to answer a question in front of your class. Being the only African American child in an all white class. Having a speech impediment. Guess what people, kids are always going to feel awkward and out of place. Its part of being a kid. Having two dads or two moms is only one more thing in a long list of things that make children feel uncomfortable.

Religion has no place in government. Even if 99% of the country were Christian, it wouldn't be fair for them to legislate their values over that other 1%. No one is saying that you can't be a practicing Christian. But I don't necessarily want to live by your religious standards, whatever they may be. And I shouldn't have to. Nor should anyone else, be they homosexual or straight. The government shouldn't be in the business of defining marriage. Marriage is a religious ceremony and if churches want to refuse to marry gay people, fine. That's their perogative and the government shouldn't infringe on that either. But every "marriage" should be a civil union under the law. All people, be they the same gender or not, should have the same rights as all other couples who live under a civil union.

This isn't a hard concept to understand. We're all people. Everyone does things that other people don't approve of. We can't legislate love. We can't legislate people's personal lives. We can't determine who can be in a relationship with you. And if you want to be joined to someone under the law, then you should be allowed to - visitation rights, social security and all. We are all human. First and foremost, we should start there.

In defense of President Obama

2009-12-01T05:28:00.000-08:00

This may be a bit late, but with the upcoming troop surge in Afghanistan, its important to remember something about the last eight years.

We've been fighting two wars. This seems to have slipped through the cracks in light of the controversy surrounding the war in Iraq, but we were in Afghanistan first and the more troops and the more discussion and the more controversy that went into Iraq, the more resources were diverted from Afghanistan. What is particularly interesting (read: terrifying) about this is that Al Qaeda, the group that attacked the US on its own soil, was in Afghanistan. NOT Iraq. So what exactly were we doing in Iraq?

No one is arguing that Saddam Hussein was a good guy or that the situation for Iraqi's was not dire. But given the rhetoric that President Bush and the Republican party relied on so heavily (national security, prevention of nuclear proliferation, safety of the American people) it is interesting to note that while Saddam was not a particular fan of the United States, it didn't seem that he had any immediate plans against us, whereas Al Qaeda seems to ALWAYS have plans against us. Al Qaeda, who in our absence, has moved in to Pakistan and seems perilously close to Pakistan's seat of government and nuclear weapons.

It seems as though the people who are currently arguing that the election of President Obama has made the United States less safe, mainly the previous administration and its ardent supporters, have missed the news for the past eight years. While we have been fighting in Iraq, the invasion of Afghanistan has regressed, Al Qaeda has gained new ground. The plight of the Afghani people has been ignored. That is our mire now. That is our unfinished business.

The troop surge that President Obama has planned for Afghanistan is necessary for this unfinished business, for the protection of Americans and Afghani citizens alike and for national security. Before we can move on to other concerns, we have to take care of the messes that had been left behind - the economy being only one.

So yes, President Obama is using the same methods that President Bush used in Iraq, the same methods that President Obama opposed in the context of Iraq. But let us please remember the key differences. Al Qaeda was definitely based in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda definitely wants to attack the US. It seems to me that President Obama is actually make up for the LAPSES in national security committed by the previous administration, who diverted resources from a war that was clearly in the interest of national security to one that we're still unclear as to the reasons of.

This is the war we have to finish. Not only in the interests of national security, which are immediate and pressing, but also in the interests of humanity. We can't leave the Afghani people wondering where we've gone an who they are left with anymore than we can leave in power a group that wants us dead.

2009-11-19T08:36:00.000-08:00

It's been quite a long time since I wrote anything on here. Five months, in fact. But here I am again. IN EDINBURGH!

Which is a wonderful city, by the way. There is a castle outside my window, and a volcano next to the castle. There are old Gothic buildings everywhere and tiny supermarkets that make it much easier to make choices about what to eat. There are thrift shops and used bookstores on every corner.

I am currently also working on my dying Nanowrimo novel. It will get finished, just probably not in the eleven days that I have left in order to "win."

Other updates include: learning to kick ass at judo, and editing things for a literary magazine.

I am going to write something more interesting later, promise.

i am gripped always by maddening want

2009-06-10T23:10:00.000-07:00

I once dated a man who taught quantum physics; I learned two things that night. The first being, if you ask a quantum physicist to explain how gravity works--not what it is, not how it behaves, but how it works, he will first talk himself in circles and you wind up crying, and finally sometime between entrée and dessert, he'll call you a bitch and leave.
The second revelation came as I sat at the bar in morose solitude, pondering the cantilevered relationship between the bartender's gut and lower extremities. And this is important, so pay attention. Before the big bang, before time itself, before matter, energy, velocity...there existed a single immeasurable state called yearning. This is the special force that on a day before there were days obliterated nothing into everything. It is the unseen strings tying the planets to stars. It's the maddening want we feel from first breath to last light.

Mary Shannon - In Plain Sight

Its 2 in the morning and I'm watching tivoed "In Plain Sight"s because I'm a masochist. I genuinely enjoy not sleeping. I like being the only person awake. I really hate being tired, and every morning I curse myself for it...but coffee or a coke and I'm back on my A game...or B or C depending on the day...

Normally I'd use that quote as a lead in to something profound. But I'm having a problem and I'm not sure entirely what it stems from. Perhaps unemployment and the resulting days of waking up at noon and watching food network or crime show marathons for hours on end has resulted in a "hulu commercial" brain melting of epic proportions or maybe I'm exhausted from school and literacy fairs. Or maybe I'm just lazy, morphing into an emo underachiever right before everyone's eyes. But I exist on the surface these days. Untouchable, unmoveable. Change is unnecessary. I don't need to go anywhere. I don't know what I want, so I don't have to work to get there. This motionlessness is easy, if useless.

go forth and set the world on fire.

2009-05-07T21:14:00.001-07:00

Will someone please explain to me which of our civil liberties are being lost because of the Obama administration? The pundits on Fox News are going on and on and on about it, but they won't tell us exactly which civil liberties they are referring to, just that they affect commerce, industry and security. They won't say exactly which policies are destroying our civil liberties, either.

Could it be illegal wiretapping? Could it be torturing? Could it be holding people without arresting them or officially accusing them of anything? Could it be practically abandoning the war in Afghanistan so that the Taliban has been able to make it within 60 miles of the capital of Pakistan? Could it be ignoring global warming and global climate issues?

Hmm...wait. No. That was the last guy!

I understand that Republicans and Democrats have different opinions. And I recognize that as Jed Bartlett said (what can I say...the West Wing applies to practically everything) "Every once and a while there is a day with an absolute right and an absolute wrong. But those days almost always involve body counts," and "Complexity is not a vice." (That one is courtesy of CJ Cregg). There are lots of different arguements and lots of different questions that need to be asked. But making things up isn't okay. Stretching the truth so far that it snaps isn't okay. Every report has a slant, every station has a side. But let's not get carried away here. Civil liberties are civil liberties. Illegal wiretapping is also a crime against civil liberties. At least as bad as whatever they are claiming Obama is doing, if not worse.

Note: Fox News also was hypercritical of Obama's scaled back, private approach to National Prayer Day. Because religion has a place in government? What are civil liberties again? Separation of church and state? Anyone?

In other news:

It's spring - practically summer, with all the promise that practically summer brings. 3D sidewalk chalk and iced tea and paddle boats and picnics and the way heat seeps into your skin and puts things in perspective. Because nothing is bigger than being warm and golden and alive and drinking milk and eating warm brownies on a playground and seeing movies at night. Because sand and salt water and sunglasses are still what you dream of during dry, sarcastic winters. Because life is better in a bikini :-)

Someone want to get me a job in a private eye's office this summer?

2009-05-03T18:09:00.001-07:00

Things I've Learned this Semester:

Karl Marx is on crack.

The sound of rain is very soothing - the sound of torrents of water coming out of your gutters is obnoxious and keeps you up at night.

You don't need your own characters to distract you in class...its perfectly okay to use other people's.

Avoidance only stresses you out. Then again, doing whatever you're avoiding is also stressful. The only thing you can't avoid...is stress.

There is no better cure for existential crises than lots of smoke, crappy beer and the pounding music of mediocre college bands.

Cleaning is highly overrated :-)

Wedge heels are just as dangerous as other kinds of heels.

Torture is evil. And apparently something that we do.

Season 3 of Veronica Mars sucks just as much the second time through. But watching someone else's expressions as they watch it for the first time more than makes up for it.

Frozen pizza and pears makes for a great dinner.

Dumplings and gelato make everything better.

Nothing is as complicated as it seems.

Decisions are made by those who show up.

Turning 20 is a lot hard than you think its going to be, and a lot easier than it seems.

Sarcasm makes friends.

People can see you when you look out your window to watch them shouting at each other at 2 o'clock in the morning. That being said, if you're outside your apartment shouting...you should expect that people are probably watching.

The individual identity in modern society is everything and anything you want it to be. Basically, Marx, Weber, Durkheim and Foucault were just making things up. I have yet to find the relevance. Maybe you'll get a blog post on it when I figure it out...

Summer is coming.

breathing life into nonlife, she whispered what she'd never know.

2009-04-22T22:05:00.000-07:00

They meet in dark corners, eyes full of grains of sand that scrape their lids when they try to sleep. They are so tired of guilt, or responsibility. They are tired and sad and scared and as God watches them he doesn't understand, when he is so quick to forgive, when his wrath is so great, why they don't come to him. But absolution is so much heavier than amnesia and they have so far to carry it. And as the liquor burns their throats, the smoke scarring their lungs as they breathe, they rip each other apart with tongues and lips and teeth-nails dragging at each other's skin, pulling open old scars (pain works better than alcohol for forgetting- they will fall inside and never return).

Duncan hates when Logan starts a sentence with "Lilly would hate..."
because they both know what Lilly would hate. She would hate them for
for finding solace in each other's skin while leaving Veronica - shivering,
hardening, cracking, emerging and suddenly cold black fire slowly burning.

One day he can't do it anymore. Duncan is empty- always empty- and Logan is full, boiling, burning everything in its wake and Duncan can't pretend to feel it anymore. The night before his hands had skimmed new scars, coming away red. Tonight his hands would be clean. He led Veronica to his room that night- neither elevating nor soothing her discomfort, her confusion. He shut her in his room, locking the door from the outside before her shock had worn off - waiting for a shrill screech of anger even as he remembered that she was no longer shrill.

Veronica no longer thought in metaphors, in flowery sentences to mask her pain in poetry. She would kill Duncan (and make Logan watch so that he would know what it's like to die slowly from the inside.
-I'm already dead, Veronica
-You haven't seen death yet. )

Logan didn't react- something new and different for him - and Veronica didn't go near him. She sat down on the floor, on the other side of the room and stared.

"Like what you see?" Logan sneered, later (hours or seconds, no one was counting.)

"No."

Logan hated her voice, its detachment (he pulled her apart piece by miniscule piece, hating and loving what came apart in his hands - he shouldn't be surprised.) as if they had never rolled their eyes at Lilly behind her back, as if she had never fought with him about Duncan, as if they hadn't pretended they weren't crying in each other's arms. As if she didn't hate him for what he did to her.

"Just you wait," he spat, standing up. Veronica didn't react the way he expected - standing up or snarking or screaming - she just pulled her taser out of her bag slowly. Something else in Logan died but he was so used it, he barely noticed. He didn't give her the satisfaction of going near her, just ripped his shirt off quickly, hisssing in the gathering darkness as peices (tangible and painful and real) of skin came away. She didn't move, didn't acknowledge, didn't see. He thought that this would be his greatest sin, tearing away her hatred with his scars. His greatest victory would be breaking her gaze.

He stood there, muscles tense and trembling as she dared him to turn around with her eyes. If she could just move, anything to remind him that she hadn't frozen, he could turn around knowing she wouldn't stick the taser in his wounds before picking the lock and walking out of here leaving him empty and numb like Duncan.

Lying down would be admiting defeat, but he was tired from trembling and standing and he wondered why he couldn't keep his eyes on her long enough to watch her blink. But he couldn't stand there draining onto the carpet anymore- she would win and he would be nothing. He wondered, as he let himself down onto the bed slowly, if maybe he would like being empty, if his desperate attempts to fill Duncan (with fire, gin, himself) were cruel and existing was easier than living and fighting back against the light holding tightlyto his pain was nothign anymore. His fire paled faced with living death.

And then he was burning, all his molecules thrashing against each other as fingertips ghosted over his skin. It was all he could do to keep from screaming out in pain. The fingers were light and cold and tortured his skin because they weren't LIlly's and he love dthem anyway. They travelled up his back, drawing on circles and when they reached his throat, pressing on his adam's apple like a trigger, he screamed, air ripping him from the inside out. All the pieces he stole from her flew out from the living space he kept them, the black hole that filled him. You can't hold someone agaisnt their will, no matter how many pieces you think you have. His screams faded only after hours had passed in his minhd, only when he had ripped every piece of Veronica from his ribs and presented them to her on bended knee.

When he could next form coherent sentences in his head (his mouth could only spill words unintentionally like broken skin whispering nonwords like hate and love) a wet washcloth had replaced fingers and the flames that licked his skin had calmed and salty tears burned his open wounds. When he was clean and raw and smoldering, she lay down next to him, curling into herself and facing away. She wasn't touching him but he could feel the way the bed dipped where she lay.

"I still hate you, you know," she said quietly, but her voice had lost its detachment, warming him as though she had breathed the words onto his skin.

In the morning, Duncan found Veronica curled into Logan's side, his arm hoding her tightly to him, her hand clutching his so hard that he thought she couldn't possibly be asleep- as thought Logan was draining his fire into her to melt her ice, as thought she was cooling his rage so that he cuold live by a rule other than pain.

Entropy would equalize them and their jagged edges would merge and no matter how much they wanted to, they could never break away without tearing an unlivable piece from the other. They had broken and torn each toher apart and emerged with mixed pieces they could never separate. Duncan closed the door, went downstairs and took his pills and never wondered what it would be like to be full again.

Insomnia is my greatest inspiration. -- John Stewart

2009-04-20T22:40:00.001-07:00

There is something innately disturbing about a lot of what I see on the Daily Show...but rarely does it make me actually sick to my stomach. Recently, documents have been released describing torture techniques used by the United States in the pursuit of information and occasionally just because we don't like someone...

Jon Stewart raises some interesting questions. For example - why do you need to waterboard someone 183 times. By the 90th time they realize you aren't going to actually drown them.... Humor aside however, what I find really, really, extraordinarily sickening is not that there is an outcry of people who are disturbed, confounded and appalled by what we've been sanctioning. Party affiliations aside, our complete lack of respect for human life should be unexcusable. But no. What we are concerned with is why on earth we now need to know that we torture. Why did Obama release these documents?

Patty Noonan said that sometimes its just better to keep walking. Jon Stewart made fun by saying that while you're walking past slavery and genocide, you should put your fingers in your ears because the screams of the tortured will get really loud.

Its a lot less funny when its in writing. "Killing yourself and innocent people to make a point is sick, twisted, brutal, dumbass murder," said Josiah Bartlett on the West Wing. Its harrowing to note that the actions committed by members of our government in the name of security aren't really all that different from the people that he's describing. I don't know how many different ways I can try to say this. I hope this one works.

We have to know. We have to know so we can fight. This is the battle that we're fighting. Its not just against war mongers and terrorists elsewhere. Its not just about fighting enemies across oceans and deserts. Its about getting rid of this within ourselves as well. I'm not naive. I know that there will always be evil. There will always be ignorance which breeds evil accidentally. But that's the battle. Because if we're not fighting, they are. And then they are winning. The prize is our humanity. The cost is watching the world burn.

Good news is, apparently we won the war on terror! Woohoo!

I'm not really this depressing. I promise. Uhh...how to prove this...how to prove this...I KNOW! Wanna hear a few jokes?

Did you hear what happened to the pretzel walking down the street?
He was a-salted!

So there were two muffins in an oven. One turns to the other and says "Man! It's getting really hot in here!" the other muffin screams "AHHHHHH A TALKING MUFFIN!"

What's black and white and black and white and black and white and black and white and black and white and black and white and black and white?
A penguin rolling down a hill.
What's black and white and laughing?
The penguin that pushed him.

Okay... I can't claim credit. But if thinking about torture gets you down... please enjoy

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qsrZIB8QHic

Courtesy of the delightful Megadamian Nut and Hank and John Green, Nerdfighters!

apathy kills you slowly from the inside

2009-04-14T21:23:00.001-07:00

This is mildly late because today I was very productive...but recently I have been faced with an overwhelming apathy. I basically spend most of the day wanting to lie in bed and watch TV. I love my TV and it feels as though everything around me is overwhelming, exhausting and useless.

The "why bother"s are what really destroy the world.

Strangely enough, apathy makes you think. Our generation has been accused of many things from irrelevant and immature reading tastes to a discouraging and fateful lack of interest in everything from the environment to injustice to politics. But its not entirely our fault.

First of all (and this is in direct response to an article in the Outlook section of the Washington Post) Twilight and Harry Potter do not define our generation. Twilight, in spite of its teen fangirl spirit and its devestating escapism, asks some good questions. Harry Potter gives us some good answers. That being said - we read. Just because occasionally there is a mass consensus about good escapist literature does not mean we aren't buying other things. (End rant)

Second of all, we are faced with a new quality of crises. Governments that lie to us, obscure the facts, who don't disclose numbers or results, who seem to care more about egos and being right than the lives they put at stake just to make a point are the norm. Economic and environmental crises are so vast they seem out of our grasp, obscured in smog and parts per million and a economic market that I am still convinced is made up of Monopoly Money.

Its hard to get worked up when you feel that nothing you do will make a difference. When faced with an overwhelming amount of work, it is easier to disappear into fiction that requires nothing from you - it is passive and easy and entertaining. The world it shows you has questions and problems, yes, but they have resolutions. The good guys win in an hour. Apathy lets peace and darkness fill the space around you. It seeps inside and lulls you into complacency calm. "Do it tomorrow," it says. "These things will keep."

But outside the world is ending.

i can only turn my brain off when i'm doing this...

2009-04-02T14:30:00.000-07:00

The little puff of air, the dirt that spit out of the ground in all directions, saved his life. The whole time she was gone he had to constantly remind himself that punching things is not a substitute for breathing. In fact, the only thing that reminded him to breathe at all was the desperate hope that tainted all of Angela’s actions. It was the kind of hope that drove people mad and he had to save her even if he couldn’t save himself.

But the air puffed and the dirt flew and he didn’t know how he got there, but suddenly he was on the ground and there was dirt flying everywhere and if he didn’t see a hand soon he thought the world might stop. But there was a hand and it was moving and he knew it was hers and he pulled with everything he was worth and the hand gripped back, scratching at his hand and he though nothing felt so good in his whole life.

Hodgins was in Angela’s arms and part of him felt infinitely better, could let that go. But he had no time for watching because then she was in his arms, curling into him and breathing great gasps of air that ripped at his insides and Cam knew and she waved goodbye and smiled as she went to direct the retrieval of the crime scene.

She didn’t let go of him and he hoped to god that she never noticed she was doing it or she’d stop immediately. She stayed curled into him until the EMTs pried her out of his arms, afraid she required more medical treatment. But she was okay, just sore and tired and scared. Hodgins and Angela were already on their way to the hospital and Cam was pushing them away and telling them not to come back for a week. He knew she didn’t have the authority to tell him that but if Brennan would let him, he would never let her leave the apartment again. He’d stay with her forever. He didn’t have energy left to let that scare him. She didn’t let go of his hand. The EMTs tried really hard not to roll their eyes as they negotiated around the circumstances. When they gave her the go ahead to go home, she looked at him and for a fraction of a second he saw terror in her eyes. Then it was gone, but he led her to his car and drove her home and locked her door behind him when she went to take a shower.

The water turned on and he sat down as close as he could to the door to wait without feeling creepy. 45 minutes later the water was still running.

“Everything alright, Bones?” he asked. He received no answer. “If you don’t respond I’m coming in…” There was still nothing. He opened the door slowly. Inside the bathroom, she was standing in her underwear and long t shirt trying to scrape all the dirt off her clothes into evidence bags.

“I wanted you to think I was showering. It’s a huge waste but I needed to work and you wouldn’t have let me.” He just looked at her. As she turned to grab another bag he saw a blood stain on the neck of her shirt under her pony-tail. He stepped forward. “Bones.” He said firmly, taking her arm. She stiffened. He pulled her toward him, bringing his fingers to skim along the line of her neck.

“There could be evidence. I had to pull some of the skin off for Cam.” She said, pulling out of his grasp. He let her organize her bags, finishing whatever she had been in the middle of when he walked in as he moved past her to change the temperature of the water coming from the shower head. At least she hadn’t used up all of the hot water. When the temperature satisfied him, he turned back to her, pulling the bags out of her hand as she protested. When she figured out his plan, quickly of course, because she was a genius, she started protesting.

“I’m not done, Booth! I might be missing something! Booth! Stop it!” He picked her up. She was in no condition to fight him, but she tried her damnedest and he knew it would bruise later but her evidence bags, her systematic cataloging was breaking his heart. He walked her straight into the shower in his arms trying not to listen as her protests faded into sobs.

Under any other circumstances, it would be wildly inappropriate for him to set her on the floor of the tub and slide her t shirt over her head, to let her lean against him, his white dress shirt becoming transparent as it was soaked through. But there was no other choice and he used the comfort of his hands moving over her skin to smooth away dirt with vanilla scented soap and to massage the dirt from her hair. By the time he got to conditioner, she was recovered enough to be embarrassed but she also wouldn’t let him leave.

Later after she had found him some clothes to wear (his, that he had left there who knows how long ago, they smelled like her now) and had bundled herself into comfortable sweats, she let him order Chinese food, and while they waited he bandaged her neck. There was no need for her to ask for him to work the kinks out of her shoulders in the process. He could feel them.

That night she finally she started talking. She curled up in bed and he lay down next to her because she would ask him to leave, but she’d never ask him to stay. She rambled on about a note she had written that was probably still in the car, that someone would probably give to him and that it said something out of character and he shouldn’t hold it against –

He kissed her. Hard. As she rambled he felt relief and amazement and gratitude at the sound of her voice that it rose out of him and he kissed her. She kissed him back. And they were suddenly both very much alive.

God is not dead but alive and well and working on a much less ambitious project. -Anonymous, Graffito

2009-03-27T19:55:00.000-07:00

I used to be fairly religious. Superficially, at least, I thought there was a God, that the the Bible was mostly true and that my confirmation meant something. I participated in my confirmation class discussions, I gave homilies at the student services. I enjoyed church.

I don't know what happened. I think this probably lasted three years, at the most. I hid it well I think, though not on purpose. I was perfectly content with it, I was private about it. I didn't force it on anyone, I didn't wear cross necklaces. I think at the most I was only mildly religous, but I still don't know what happened. One day, I thought that everyone probably made their own religion out of institutionalized ones, that every Christian was a little different. Some time passes and now I think there may be a higher being, maybe.

Here's my problem: I don't know that God, the higher power, the Creator or whatever you wish to call him, really cares about how we worship him, unless that is the sole purpose for which we were created. And if that is the case, then this is a rather vain and selfish god who I do not think deserves my worship whether he created me or not. And if we were created for some other purpose, if there is some other reason why we exist and why we have this island, ocean blue planet and all we're worrying about is the specific ritual details about how we worship, then we are probably doing something wrong.

If God only gave us pleasure to tempt us, I am quite content with giving in. That is just cruel and sadistic. Perhaps, by being so concerned with what not to do, we might be missing the point. Maybe, if there is a higher power, the test is one that we are most desperately failing. How to live harmoniously, how to be happy, how live and let live...

I sound like a tree-hugging, hemp wearing hippie. All I'm trying to say is that perhaps if we were less concerned with living by specific rituals, deadlocked rules and commandments given to us by an incomprehensible God, and more concerned with living with basic human rules, rules we can all understand, we'd be happier. And if whatever created us has a problem with that, then we rebel. There are more of us than there are of him anyway. We can totally take him.

You might want to stand back... I think there is a lightning bolt in my future.

A Play To Live By

2009-03-25T20:11:00.000-07:00

"Never support two weaknesses at the same time. It's your combination sinners — your lecherous liars and your miserly drunkards — who dishonor the vices and bring them into bad repute. Nurse one vice in your bosom. Give it the attention it deserves and let your virtues spring up modestly around it. Then you'll have the miser who's no liar; and the drunkard who's the benefactor of the whole city."

Malachi Stack
The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder

It's a farce, supposedly, a comedy designed to make you laugh. And you laugh, uproariously. But you also think for a minute. And what you think about isn't ethereal or abstract. Basically - how do you enjoy life? And what is with puritanical obsessions with morality and living correctly? Vices shouldn't be harmful, and they shouldn't be mean. But somewhere, throughout the course of history, enjoying one's self became a sin. Which, if you think about it, is completely ridiculous. We're here, we don't know why - we don't really know how we started or who pushed the button or how. But there are so many things to enjoy...

Bad decisions are good for you in small doses. Eating McDonald's french fries dipped in a chocolate shake. Getting a little drunk and dancing with someone you don't know. Reading trashy romance novels. Showing a little leg. Staying up entirely too late to watch a movie (that may or may not have Joshua Jackson in it...)

Make bad decisions every once in awhile. They cure existential crises and they make for good stories. And life should be about the pursuit of good stories.

And while you're at it:

"The difference between a little money and no money at all is enormous...and the difference between a little money and an enormous amount of money is very slight. And they can both shatter the world."

Dolly Gallagher Levi
The Matchmaker by Thornton Wilder