Step up, step back

Exams are almost over, and I'm considering my current life. I burned a few too many bridges a little too soon, and now I'm fending for myself in social situations. Surprisingly enough, this has actually opened me up to new opportunities. I've been spending time with people whose company I enjoy and venturing out of my (former? let's go with "usual") social circle, which is actually kind of gratifying. It's nice to know that I don't have to rely on anyone for social interaction; that is, I can leave my comfort zone with ease. I guess I'm not as socially anxious as I thought.

Things I Love: Part 47

I love bad things. Not things that are dangerous or crazy, but things that are bad. Bad movies, bad music... not bad clothes, but you get the idea. And my father can't comprehend my appreciation for the atrocious, especially when we're in the car and I suddenly decide to listen to the .38 Special.
I used to read a blog called Awesomely Bad Lyrics that no longer updates, and oh my goodness it was the funniest blog I've ever read. The guy that wrote it would post videos for songs like "Jessie's Girl" and "Hot Blooded" and then just tear the lyrics apart. It was nearly always brilliant (except for a few that were a little too crass for my taste, and one about "The Dolphin's Cry") and it got me into bands like Foreigner and Duran Duran. Last season when Glee did an episode about bad songs, it made me happy because they included some of my favorites.
My top five, desert island atrocious songs are:

1. "Cold As Ice," Foreigner
2. "Sister Christian," Night Ranger
3. "Notorious," Duran Duran
4. "Sunglasses At Night," Corey Hart
   
5. "Total Eclipse of the Heart," Bonnie Tyler
   

Slogging forward

I didn't think I could end a twelve-year friendship neatly, but this level of drama is getting ridiculous. It's like we hit the Angst Solstice. Good thing I'm spending the summer away from everybody who's making my life insane right now. I'm tempted to pick up and pack out right now.

Forward

I was walking down the street today, after walking my mother to her yoga class, wearing a summery skirt for the first time (because the stupid weather finally decided to correspond to the season) and thinking about Life. Specifically, my Life.

In two months, I'm going to sing a solo recital. I'm going to graduate high school. I'm going to the Adirondacks for my seriously excellent job as a prep cook at Unirondack.

In four months, I'm going to attend my dream school.

In one week, the exam season starts, but right now, that doesn't scare me. My future has never looked brighter! There is an avenue of possibilities opening before me, and while I'm nervous about IB and CCA exams and exhausted after slogging through friendship drama, I'm feeling optimistic about life right now.

Today, as I strolled Hipster Haven, enjoying my swishy peasant skirt and the warmth of the deepening evening, and later, while watching Glee (I don't know why I thought Lady Gaga was making a guest appearance, but when she didn't show up, I was disappointed), I kept thinking, "I'm so glad it's Friday. Wait-- It's Tuesday! I'm just not at dance!" It's nice to have an evening to yourself, and it's nice to be able to contemplate the future with a serene smile on your face as you wander down the trendy part of town, dressed nicely and feeling chipper.

To the future!

Inspired by the lovely K. Hendy

I made my decision. After visiting Bryn Mawr and deciding that it wasn't as good as Smith, I decided to go to Smith, and I am thrilled. Part of my excitement derives from the fact that I have wanted to go to Smith desperately, with all my heart, since I was about ten. (There was a period in there when I wanted to assert my independence from my sisters by going to Bryn Mawr, but fuck that noise. Smith is the most radical. In more than one sense of the word. What kind of women's college doesn't have openly gay girls? But I digress.) There's another part of me that's excited and happy because of what going to Smith means to everyone else.

I want to make it clear at the outset that I am not going to Smith to make anyone else happy. It's all me, baby. That said, both of my sisters went to Smith, and it's satisfying that we ended up there in different ways. Emily went Early Decision, Caroline was a transfer student, and I'm going Regular Decision, after a winding road involving obsession with BU, a brief infatuation with Bryn Mawr, and finally realizing the one I loved all along, Smith. It's like something out of Cynthia Heimel.

Anyway, now we have the trifecta. My whole family is delighted, and because I enjoy making people happy, that's nice. Since I made my decision on Monday, I've been considering what my Smith experience will be like. It'll be strange to not have ballet class every night, and because I was a Puritan in a past life, I dislike being idle, so I'll probably pick up some kind of new activity, but what?

Let's be frank. It's going to be something involving music, or theater, or musical theater. But to continue my story:

Today, Caroline called me to say that she thinks I should join crew because she's worried that I'll develop body image issues when I'm not dancing every day and start gaining weight.

It's an interesting idea, and not one I haven't considered. At the Bryn Mawr Open Campus Weekend, all of the rich girls wearing only Prada (and no, that's not an exaggeration) kept talking about the Freshman 15, and I realized: My metabolism is really fast because I dance like it's a part-time job, but in college, that will no longer be the case. Then what? My options are, as far as I can tell:

1. Pick up a dance minor so I can be in class regularly
2. Go to the gym a lot. (Downside: I will ruin this "dancer's body" I've been trying to develop for twelve years. This is actually not that accurate, because I'm the Betty Boop of ballerinas, so I will never have a dancer's body. But it still bugs me.)
3. Get a grip and not obsess about my goddamn weight.

I've never really had body image issues, in part because my ballet teacher is a genius and never, ever tells us we have the wrong bodies unless girls want to go pro and their bodies can't handle that level of stress (hyperextending knees, etc.). But another part of that is, I think, because I've always been pretty svelte. If I suddenly gained a bunch of weight, how would I react? I'm guessing not favorably.

This is a source of concern. A bigger concern is the recent discovery that K doesn't like her body, and that is a lot more important than my own self-involved ramblings. You can tell a girl over and over that she's beautiful, but you can't make her believe it. I was honestly surprised when I read this post. But what can I do?

Here is why I love movies and TV shows from the sixties: Towards the end of the movie, every time, there is a point when everything falls apart and goes crazy. Often this involves car chases, people shouting at each other, then people kissing, seemingly at random, but held together seamlessly. The best times are when laws of physics are defied, like when Scooby-Doo uses trash can lids to fly or when the cop car is sliced tidily in half by concrete in the original Freaky Friday. (That might actually be from the seventies. Who cares?) And it's marvelous when, on an unpredictable pretext, all of the characters are brought together and it turns out that everything up to that point has been a sham. It's just marvelous! Especially since, in a lot of these movies, the actors playing bit parts overact to a hilarious degree, so their performances are really the cherry on top of the mayhem sundae.

And now, here's why I like 1950's thrillers (a genre that I have recently gotten into): First of all, they're easily heckled, and they're easy to heckle well. They're like the MST3K version of pasta salad: easy to make, and hard to make badly. (From the heckler's point of view. Sometimes the production values are quite high on these atrocious movies.) It Came From Outer Space was a little like the MST3K version of Manos: Hands of Fate in that I repeated the title a lot, with variations, but because there was more to work with, it was much funnier.

Second of all, it's amusing to watch the terrible special effects. The best terrible special effects are probably in Them!, a real classic about invading alien species. I won't spoil what the aliens are or what they look like, but I promise you that they are worth seeing.

Thirdly, speaking of Them!, you never know who might turn up in these dreadful movies. Them! has Edmund Gwenn, who was Kris Kringle in Miracle on 34th Street! It was quite funny, because whenever the Edmund Gwenn character said anything at all during Them!, it relaxed me visibly. Even when he was talking about dynamite! The human mind is a strange thing. That Pavlov fella was onto something, I tell ya what.

Fourth, it's interesting to see where all these horror movie cliches come from, and

Fifth, I don't usually like horror movies because the trouble with having a visual mind is that unpleasant images are indelibly printed on my brain and they take a long time to shake. However, 1950s movies are suspenseful, but because they date so obviously and are always just this side of ridiculous, it's basically impossible to be actually scared by them, but they do give you a kind of rush. Invasion of the Body Snatchers was the best thriller I've ever seen, a real classic, and although it was slow-moving to me because I actually knew what was going to happen, it was really great. Suspenseful, exciting, and scary, but not petrifying. Just frightening enough to give you a good scare, but not excessive at all. Really great. I cannot advocate that genre enough.

And she's back!

Hey, guys, sorry for the dry spell. My computer got a virus and was down for weeks. I know all of you were just devastated.

So, a couple weeks ago, my English class was about to start Death of A Salesman, and we were discussing the American dream. The "popular kids" or as I called them in seventh grade, "the conniving sluts" had apparently spent St. Patrick's Day drinking steadily from sunrise to God only knows when, and were massively hung over. This took the form of them all being in extremely bad tempers, so throughout this discussion, they vehemently denied the feasibility of the American dream.

"It's just not realistic," Bad Dye Job said.

"Yeah," said Bags Under Eyes. "Remember Econ last year? The poverty cycle? You can't break out of it. It perpetuates itself."

"It's all outdated propaganda," said the Girl Who Contradicts Everything I Say (remember her? It's been a while).

They continued in this vein even after a boy talked about his dad emigrating to America from Pakistan, finishing high school, going to college, and becoming an engineer. These kids absolutely refused to accept that people can build themselves up.

And they're wrong, of course. My family is an example of the American dream. My great-grandmother couldn't speak English. She emigrated to America from Poland. My grandma and great-aunt ate borsht for breakfast every day and grew up on the East Side, in a cluster of other Polish immigrants. They both talk all the time about taking Accounting courses in high school, going to work as secretaries, finding work anywhere they could, working to improve themselves.

When my great-uncle (my grandpa's brother) came over from Sicily, he didn't speak any English. He grabbed education anywhere he could get his hands on it and eventually owned his own store.

I am proud to have this family history. In the way of an upper-middle class white kid, it's pleasing to realize that my family became who they are today through hard work. Going to my school, I'm surrounded by an unpleasant sense of entitlement, which is something I try to avoid. It's profoundly irritating to listen to people talk about how they got into Geneseo, like that's hard. It is hard, assholes!

I believe that it's easier to distance oneself from one's roots in America. I am in love with my family's past. (Less so with my dad's side. It's not quite as interesting. Or if it's more interesting, nobody ever talks about it.) That's part of this city's appeal to me. It's broken-down, dirt broke, and freezing as hell, but I have deep roots here. And it allows me to connect with my past. I know where my grandma used to live and where she went to school, where my great-grandmother lived, and where she got married. My family built themselves up, and it's credible that we didn't leave this place in our dust. We stayed put, and now we're all giving back to the place that got us where we are.

American Dream. It's true, all you disbelieving, hung over bitches. Love it. Own it.

All I ask of you (didn't mention, also great)

It's fashionable to run down Oklahoma!, but I admit it: I love that show. I actually wish we had done that instead of South Pacific, for several reasons, but the biggest reason is because South Pacific didn't have a good romantic duet. I'm sorry, R&H, but "Some Enchanted Evening" just doesn't cut it. The romantic in me (that I keep tied up and gagged in a closet) has a soft spot for duets in musicals.

Example. "People Will Say We're In Love." First of all, the version with Hugh Jackman is just mind-blowing, because Hugh Jackman is stunning and perfect for that role. But even the song itself is brilliant. It's funny and sweet and touching. It rocks. (See, R&H, you had it in you! Why didn't you put a nice song like that in South Pacific? Did you use all your creative talents on "This Nearly Was Mine"? Because that's not a good excuse!)

Or what about "In Whatever Time We Have"? From Children of Eden, a slightly lesser-known musical, which I was lucky enough to be in during freshman year. That song has the most beautiful harmonies, and the two people that sang it in our show sounded great together. That song is so beautifully composed, and oh my goodness I love it so much.

And hey, a good duet doesn't need to be a mixed couple. Just look at "In His Eyes," one of my absolute favorite musical theater songs. It's from Jekyll and Hyde, which is an awfully dark musical, but very beautiful. My voice teacher is a big fan of Jekyll and Hyde. I know one girl who is her student also and has sung at least three songs from Jekyll and Hyde over the course of two years. As far as I'm concerned, they're all worthwhile, but if you watch the Hasselhoff version, some of his songs are awkward. It's hard to appreciate a song when the singer has no neck. I don't know why, but that disconcerts me rather.

And if boy/girl duets are how you roll, there's another in Jekyll and Hyde that I have been known to listen to on repeat for hours at a time. (Not exaggerating.) "Take Me As I Am." It's breathtaking here (although the lady that plays Emma is a little odd looking. She has a great voice, though.) and you should listen to it. Possibly my current favorite duet.

Current obsessions

"I'm Through With Love" as performed by Marilyn Monroe

because J told me during the musical that in my white halter top, blond hair and red lipstick I looked like Marilyn in that really famous picture where she's wearing the white dress. Without question, this was the best compliment I have ever received. Since then, I've been thinking about that song a lot.

"Sort Of," by Ingrid Michaelson

because we danced to it today in modern and I wanted to listen to it on repeat for hours (which is what I'm doing now, as I type this), and I want to hear it playing in my head when I take my first bike ride of the season.

The Lone Pilgrim, by Laurie Colwin

because I've been in that sort of mood.

Madame Bovary, by Gustave Flaubert

because I grabbed it in the library and the narrative style is delicious, rather to my surprise.

Clearly there is such a thing as too much Laurie Colwin

Years later, she was living in Toronto in a small, clean apartment with an orange tree in a pot. She never sought him out. Their reunion was simply a matter of well engineered chance.

She took her neighbor to a production of Waiting For Godot- and suddenly, there he was. Her old friend, lost in her old scrapbooks, on the stage once more. It alarmed her when he sang at the opening of Act 2- she had forgotten how powerful his voice could be. It brought back so many memories. All those years they spent together, before.

By a happy coincidence, the neighbor was slightly insulted by her intent gaze upon the stage, and departed with an acquaintance whom he chanced to spot during intermission. She did not care. When the play was ended, she stood outside the stage door, smoking for the picture it created, not out of any real enjoyment. The smoke would frame her face and would catch the fluorescent light cast by the lamppost nearby.

He left the theater alone and saw her- not the picture she tried to create, but her. The abstract affection with which he viewed many of the people from his past dissipated instantly. He went to the lamppost, and a new portrait was formed. She threw her cigarette to the sidewalk, and he took her hand.

Feedback, please?

Monotony

I'm a sensible person, but I occasionally wonder if I'm only sensible because opportunities for stupidity don't present themselves. My life is pretty dull. I'm responsible, and I make good decisions. It's tiresome.

However, Caroline's most recent post has made me proud of my ho-hum life. I am sensible, and I will make good decisions at college, because Caroline thinks that I will.

Words! Words! Words!

Reading A's blog has made me want to start writing poetry (don't worry, I'm not going to) which is a really weird thing because I don't like poetry. A while back, one of my friends from camp messaged me a poem that he wrote, asking me to critique it, and he sent it to maybe six other kids that are really good writers. I couldn't understand why I was included in this message. I am vehemently opposed to poetry, especially amongst adolescents.

I'm not a writer the way others my age are. I don't write poetry or fiction, I write what's happening around me and what I think about. I do this because I need to loosen up. In my absolute favorite book of all time, I Capture The Castle, the protagonist is keeping a journal partly to practice speed writing, but also to refine her style. She says that her father (who is an author) tells her that she "combine[s] stateliness with a desperate attempt to be funny" and tells her "to relax and let the words flow out." This pretty well describes my writing style, I feel. Cassandra Mortmain is a lot like me-- and I am a lot like her.

Anyway. In eighth grade, I kept a notebook that was sort of like a diary, but I wrote it in the third person and changed everybody's name in a moronic attempt at anonymity. I carried this notebook around with me during school, so I worried a lot about people seeing it. In ninth grade, I carried around two notebooks--one of which I finished--that were straight up diaries where I also recorded quotes and lists. I didn't do the third person or different names thing, but maybe I should have, since C read it and I was more humiliated than I think I've ever been in my entire life. Now, I keep a diary at home. I've finished three paper journals, and it's amusing to go back and read them and burn with embarrassment at how pretentious I was (and still am).

I really want to believe that my writing style has evolved, but I don't think it's changed so much as I've just grown into it. I wrote pretty much the same way I do now when I was in eighth grade. I guess I sounded really smart, but more than that, I just sound like a pretentious little snot. Which I was. (Less so now. At least, I hope.) Basic narration suits me. If I let myself slip just a little, I'd get all self-indulgent, with the overuse of commas and second person and what have you.

Je veux te voir

I want to go to college. Any college. I want to shut myself in the library and study all day long, I want to get chocolate chip cookies at the Student Union after one of my friends has had a bad day, I want to go to a lame Smith party with no boys and tons of dyke drama. I want to meet new people who can teach me how to serve tea the proper English way or how to properly wrap presents. I want to join an a capella group with a silly name and take General Anatomy and pick apart cadavers. I want to work at a student radio station or in a dining hall kitchen. I want to play rugby, join crew, or just start a study group. I want to have a social life. I want about twenty-five other things that I'm not going to post on the Internet because they would sound self-pitying, and I think people are starting to get concerned about the sudden rise of angst in here.

Sure, some of these wants are plagiarized. But I don't really care. They all sound good to me.

OK, maybe not crew, but all of the other ones.

For you, dear readers, a landscape:

Saint Joseph's Table, my very favorite holiday. We had it early this year so my grandmother and great-aunt could come before they go to Arizona, so Lent hasn't started yet and my grandpa could eat the cannolis. (Every year he gives up sweets, and it breaks my heart to see my delightful Italian grandpa pass the plate of cannoli down the table without even looking at them. He does it every year, but it still makes me sad.) We were all stuffed to the gills (an unpleasant expression, but accurate in this case) and getting up fro the table. I was sitting in an armchair away from the table, watching my family disperse, and I caught a glimpse of something that filled me with happiness. My six foot something-or-other super Italian (dark hair, stubbly beard, the works- think Italian soccer player) heavy drinker cousin who was visiting from American University was alone at the table for a second, and he bent over to smell the little daffodils that were on the table.

Ditto this.

I am a massive fan of this.

My day today

Shockingly, if you scold and scold a person, then threaten them, then yell at them to stop crying, that person won't stop crying.

I know I'm stunned.

Tell me why

The other day, I was getting ice cream with C, and she posed a very interesting question.

Why do I pursue the arts? Specifically, why do I pursue the performing arts when doing so means subjecting myself to more or less constant abuse from myself and others?

I mean, I'm medium talented, so I guess that could be one reason. The Bible says not to hide your light under a bushel, and you could say I've taken this to heart.

I love performing, but I don't do it often, at least not in the traditional sense. At dance class, because I am a showoff, I perform every movement whenever I think anyone is watching me. (Little girls, parents of other students, any of the other people in my class- I'm a little shameless.) In my extended essay, I talked a lot about how "performing" differs from "execution of steps." What I didn't mention was that performing is way more fun. What's the point of doing a series of dance steps? Why do that when you could be an evil witch plotting vengeance, or a bird trying to escape capture, or a cheerful peasant dancing in the streets for joy?

Unless you dance with me, you probably don't know this, but ballet makes me absolutely miserable, a lot of the time. I have the unfortunate habit of comparing myself with other people, and the misconception that success at any endeavor should be proportional to age. I am younger than Caroline, so she has to be smarter, and she is, because she's been to college and I haven't. By this logic, K is three years younger than me, ergo, it is impossible for her to be a better dancer.

And that's just not true.

Still, it frustrates me that girls who are so much younger than I are so much stronger. I have a very flexible body but exceptionally little strength. My teacher called me a wet noodle, which is pretty astute. I wiggle and flop around. Not nearly as much as I used to, but more than I'd like. And it's a constant source of frustration, because I hold myself to a very high standard that's very hard to live up to and frankly, that I'm sick of. I'd kill to be able to take a pointe class and say, "That was better than last week!"

So if I wrestle with my subconscious every time I go to ballet class, why bother going at all?

Love is just hard to explain.

And why do I still work with the music department when I hate Mrs. N's guts and she insults me and my friends in every class and rehearsal? Once, I liked to sing. It's hard to sing when you're gritting your teeth because someone just told you your rhythm was off when there's a pit band, piano, and orchestra that are all playing at different tempos and you don't know who to follow.

I guess I'm just a masochist.

Even working out didn't help

When you let the crazy-dam leak just a little, it bursts and suddenly you find yourself entertaining crazy, nightmarish daydreams on the elliptical.

There's a con this weekend, and I've been rereading the chaplain handbook because I'm one of the chaplains, but the book just made me feel worse. It has sections about the warning signs of suicide and why it's absolutely critical that you keep your own emotions in check throughout the entire duration of the con or else nobody will come to you for help and then the issues will fester and ruin the weekend. Ack! I'm very nervous, and since I've been telling people how nervous I am, they'll feel apprehensive about approaching me for chaplaining!

I think I need a chaplain.

Back to the original purpose of this blog

Enough of these petty emotions. Begone with ye, avast!

I recently picked up a book called Wintergirls, by Laurie Halse Anderson. I really liked Speak, so I've always given her other books a chance, although they tend to be gloomy, depressing, and overall disappointing in comparison. Not that Speak is a barrel of laughs, but at least it has a happy ending. Most of her endings tend to be ambiguous, which I don't love. She writes about teenage issues, such as: rape, internet bullying, college rejections, and the subject of Wintergirls: eating disorders.

Wintergirls was far and away the most terrifying book I have ever read, and to put this in perspective, I've read books like First They Killed My Father, The Bell Jar, and Night. (Which one was read for pleasure? See if you can guess! The answer will be revealed at the end of the post!) This book is about an anorexic girl (high school senior) whose friend who was also anorexic, dies. The main character has been institutionalized multiple times (it's not clear exactly how many) and she still isn't better. For the life of me, I couldn't understand why she wants to be anorexic. She keeps thinking about how hungry she is and how badly she wants to eat, and it doesn't seem to be a body image thing, because she knows she's thin already. As far as I can tell, she is obsessed with cleanliness, because she talks herself out of eating breakfast by thinking about how clean she is inside when she wakes up.

This book is chock-full of disturbing imagery. For example, the girl has to be weighed every week (technically every day, but her family is too busy), and she wears the same yellow bathrobe for the weighing. Her stepmother doesn't know that this bathrobe has quarters sewn into the hemline and pockets. For some reason, that image is impossible to shake. Then, later, she weighs herself on her own scale, which is really fancy and can't be duped, and she weighs 99 pounds.

99 pounds.

Then she talks about how her ultimate goal is 90 pounds.

"At 90 pounds, I will soar," she thinks.

I think the reason that this disturbed me so much is because I know a surprisingly large group of people that have had eating disorders, and it's troublesome to think that they might have thought these kinds of thoughts. It also bothers me that girls who do not have eating disorders and never have occasionally talk about how people think they do. These conversations get braggy very quickly, and it's bizarre; they start out with the girls talking about how they could never have eating disorders, then degenerate into a kind of contest. "My mother thought I did," they'll say, or "the school nurse." "My teachers." This contest is multifaceted; you can score points for how many people thought you were bulimic, how many thought you were anorexic, and who these people were. Bonus points if it's someone in the medical community.

This is very cynical. I know that these girls (and I say girls just because I've never heard boys do it, but for all I know, they could be) aren't thinking about this in terms of a contest or even anything to win, exactly. But it makes you feel sort of good about yourself, in a weird way.

It's only recounting the stories that makes people feel good. When someone really thinks you're unhealthy, your first instinct isn't pride or modesty or anything like that. It's shock, disgust, anger, hurt. Often anger.

The moral of this post is: don't read Wintergirls if you know someone who has or had an eating disorder, if you don't like teen angst, or if you enjoy feeling happy. I didn't even finish it and it deeply unnerved me. A downside to a visual mind is that pictures are harder to erase than words, and Laurie Halse Anderson has quite a way with imagery.

ANSWER: Trick question! I started reading First They Killed My Father for pleasure when I was nine, on a car trip, then put it down and picked it back up seven years later, the summer before senior year. The Bell Jar I just picked up for funsies. That was poor planning on my part.

As far as I'm concerned, Night is the ideal length for a book about genocide, because the beauty of concise writing is that you remember the whole book, not just random snippets. Still, it was no joy ride. I had to read that the summer before freshman year, and in my summer reading essay, I had nothing to say about it.

Conceited

Today in English, we were writing conceits, and I started to write one about how separation is like perfume, how it pervades every area and gets into places you wouldn't expect and lingers and leaves before you want it to, and everywhere you smell it, you remember. It's in the scarf you wore when you went for a walk in the bitter cold and the movie you watched together and the room where you played board games. Then when it's gone, you think you've forgotten but then you see someone else with the same scent; they have the same gloves, or you hear one of the old songs when you're watching TV or in the supermarket, and it all comes rushing back.

Then I realized that my English teacher would be reading these out loud to the class, so I stopped mid-sentence and wrote something about how hate is like rain.

I know what I wrote isn't very good in terms of literary merit. It was trite adolescent crap, and so is this post. But the emotions were there, and that disarmed me. I thought I was OK now.

I definitely wasn't expecting my pen to write those words. Damn pen.

It's easier to limp. Less noticeable. I don't want a cane.

Eye to the Telescope

I have a lovely view of the East Side from my computer at the library at Centaur High. I can see clear across Main Street, over the buildings that are falling apart and the people who are holding it together, the hospitals about to close down and the churches that already have. The projects, the construction, even part of the ugly building I'm currently in. All of it is covered with snow, so it doesn't look quite so bad.
I can't wait to get out of this city, but I almost feel guilty for admitting that. It needs me. Leaving it would be like visiting your ailing mother in a nursing home, then kissing her goodbye and never calling her again. I have my whole life ahead of me, and my poor ailing city has had its glory days a long, long time ago.
I know I'll probably end up moving back here at some point. Nobody ever leaves for good. My roots are here. I'm the kind of person who respects roots.

Blue

Bob Dylan, "Most of the Time"

Ingrid Michaelson, "The Hat"

The Avett Brothers, "I Would Be Sad"

She and Him, "Sentimental Heart"

Kurt Elling, "I Get Along Without You Very Well"

Not heartbroken, just sad. When people talk to me on the phone, they note how sad I sound. D told me that today, when we went to the mall. Caroline noticed but didn't comment until I asked about it.

Everyone's been so nice. My friends are really considerate. C and A came over yesterday, and I went shopping with D. I have really great friends.

I don't even care who reads this. Everyone already knows I'm sad.

What was and what might be again

Over the weekend, I watched "Akeelah and the Bee" for the first time, and it made me nostalgic for last year's musical. The 25th Annual Putnam County Spelling Bee. I was actually in that show twice; the first time was with school, when I played Olive's Mom and got to wear a sari and was in an extremely poor health situation, and the second time was at camp. The camp one was best because I got to play the role that I had wanted originally (Marcy Park, the perfect Catholic girl. As the only Catholic at Unirondack, I suspect I was a shoo-in) and did the show with some of my very favorite people on God's green earth and learned that I can sing in a split. That was fun. The second round of Putnam was so much more fun- partly because I was much, much healthier, and partly because of the camaraderie in that cast. We worked together during every available moment, and we were tight.

This year, M and I are trying to get people in the cast of South Pacific to become closer, but I don't know how well it's working. Before most rehearsals, we get the whole cast together and play improv games to try and loosen people up. Two years ago, a girl who has now graduated had us do acting exercises- meditations and that thing where you all try to count to ten one at a time, without interrupting anybody, and soundscapes and things- but she actually knew what she was doing. She went to NYSSA and wanted to be a professional actress. M and I are not quite so experienced. Plus, there's a limit on what we can do because we're working with middle schoolers now, and they don't want to or can't do a lot of the more complex exercises. And on top of that, we're meeting with some resistance from high school students. It's frustrating.

I'm going to keep working at it, though, for no other reason but for people to make friends. The first time I did the musical, I was so paralyzed by my fear of the other members of the cast- who were all astonishingly talented- that I spent the entire duration of the play talking to maybe five people. I don't want anyone else to feel like that.

And so we press on, daunted but trying not to show it.

I never should have read The Bell Jar

And here's why:

1. It scared me witless.
2. Whenever I feel a little depressed, I immediately start thinking about "the bell jar" (not the book, the principle) and that's scary.
3. It made me afraid to go to Smith because I thought I'd lose it like Sylvia Plath did.
4. It made me think about depression much more than I'm comfortable with.

Maybe I'm just tired, maybe it's the literature I've been reading, but I'm feeling rather morose. Let's hope dance helps.

Scullery maid

Yesterday, I had a gig working a party. I was supposed to help take coats and shoes, keep things in the kitchen running smoothly, and ply people with wine. (I love the verb "ply.")

The lady that had hired me had sent out a mass email that my mother got, and so I had never met her before. When we spoke on the phone, I noticed that she had a very thick French accent- it was so thick, it sounded fake. I later learned that she had gone to college in France, and that she was a professor at three local colleges. As soon as she found out that I take French at school, she instantly slid into French and proceeded to address me almost exclusively in French for the remainder of the evening. I was very proud of myself because I was able to follow almost everything she said.

My family gives a lot of parties, but they bear little resemblance to the party where I worked last night. For one thing, our parties are always much smaller than that, and we usually have separate parties for friends and family. This is partly due to the fact that my parents don't have a ton of bosom friends. They have scores of acquaintances, but not on the order of these people. They actually kissed each other on both cheeks in greeting. It was like being inside a French II textbook!

For another, we always make our own food. Even when my father was leaving the board of Squeaky Wheel and we had all the artists, board members, and all of their spouses come over, we made everything. (That was when Caroline's much-lauded walnut tart made its debut. Just thinking about it makes my mouth water.) Although these people had a lovely kitchen, I got the sense that they aren't good at using it. (Their kitchen had about five of those posters that show multiple varieties of one kind of food with the names underneath the pictures, like chocolate or beans, only all of these posters were about mushrooms. And they were all different. Who likes mushrooms that much?) I could tell because my first task was slicing lemons and limes for people's San Pelegrino (nobody used them), and the lady of the house passed me some slices she had just made. They were thin and sort of ragged. She suggested that I use them also, so I arranged them artfully on the little trays I had been given for the lemons and limes, effectively concealing them.

And finally, my family is not composed of actual sadists who think it's a fun idea to hire a BAGPIPE PLAYER for a BIRTHDAY PARTY. The bagpipe player (bagpipist? I'll just go with "bagpipe player") was a ginger with a Scottish accent, and he wore a kilt. The whole nine yards. He played the bagpipe in the room just next to the hall where I was posted, waiting to take people's coats and shoes. It was absolute agony. And these people actually drew closer to the sound of bagpipes as soon as this guy started playing! I know my first instinct when confronted with the sound of bagpipes is an overwhelming urge to flee. I stood in the hall, gritting my teeth and fighting my perfectly reasonable instincts as I watched all these weirdos clasp their hands together in glee.

In the kitchen, there was a Polish lady who seemed to be some kind of caterer's assistant. As the limits of my job were vaguely defined once people had arrived and gotten settled, I went straight to my comfort zone- the kitchen- and began to help this lady. (I forget her name- it began with J, so that's what I'll call her.) J was very nice to me. She reminded me very much of my grandma, although much younger and much, much shorter- she just reached my shoulder. She came to America in 1972, she said, and she told me, "ever since then, I've just been helping." Really, she was so cute. And she let me have some of the leftover mashed potatoes, too, which was especially nice since I had forgotten to eat before leaving home. Once people's coats and shoes had been settled (which took quite a long time- there were maybe 30 people there!) I went and helped J with the dishes. She washed, and I dried. Washing dishes is very therapeutic to me- I actually just had a conversation with L about it. I find it steadying, because it's a way to help out in unfamiliar territory. That might not be the only reason why, but it's partly why.

All in all, it was an interesting night, and not terribly hand work, especially since I got to keep my shoes off.

Week From Hell Chocolate Cake

1 and 1/2 cups flour
1 tsp baking soda
1/2 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp salt
1 cup vegetable oil
1 and 1/4 cups sugar
2 eggs
1 cup warm water
3/4 tsp vanilla extract
1/2 cup cocoa

Preheat oven to 350 degrees and prepare a 9x13 pan with butter and coat with a small amount of flour. (If you have a springform pan, use that.) Shake off excess.
Sift together flour, baking soda, baking powder, and salt. Set aside.
In a large mixing bowl, combine oil, sugar and eggs. Add water and vanilla extract.
Slowly add flour mixture, alternating with cocoa. Batter will be slightly lumpy.
Pour batter into the prepared pans and bake at 350 degrees for 35-40 minutes. Insert a toothpick in the center of the cake to test. Allow to cool and frost as desired (I didn't bother, but maybe next time).

Illumination

L. visited me this weekend, and with her visit, she brought an interesting thing to my attention. The reasoning behind this blog's title may be an absolute mystery to several of my readers. (I'm not sure how many of these I have, but as I live most of my life outside of my city, it's not an unreasonable assumption that many of you don't occupy the same city or even region as I do.) Allow me to explain.
My house is magenta. It has been for almost four years now. I have found that one of the first questions I get asked is, "Whose idea was that?" and it's always pleasurable to respond, "My dad's." My father has a pink shirt that he saves for his court dates. He has pink socks with white polka dots that he wears to work. And it was he who first suggested, on that spring evening so long ago, that we repaint our house pink.
I remember it well. We were finishing dinner (a rare occurrence; this was back when we still tried to have family dinners every night, even though I had dance classes during normal dinner hours) and Easter had just passed, so Caroline and I were having some leftover Easter chocolate for dessert. My father reached over and picked up the box my granparents had sent, that housed a chocolate bunny.
"Just this shade," he said. "It would be great! A very classic Victorian color."
My mother pursed her lips and gave him a cold look that stopped just short of being Sicilian. Undaunted, my father continued.
"We could do the trimmings in this," he said, holding up another chocolate box. This one was purple. He stacked them on top of each other. "They complement each other beautifully."
I don't remember how we convinced my mother, but somehow we did! That summer, a group of somewhat sullen painters dangled outside our house at all hours, doing their best to avoid splashing pink onto their clothes. The crowning glory of the paint job was the discovery that not only was our house vividly pink and painted with latex paint that would not fade, it also reflected off our neighbor's white house. On very bright afternoons, the sun bounces back into the dining room, so that everyone is bathed in a flattering rosy glow. There we sit, listening to Bob Dylan and enjoying our magenta house and all its accompanying perks.

January 8th

Listen to this as you read: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=W4dtodbhNys

"Meg had spent the time in working as well as waiting, growing womanly in character, wise in the housewifely arts, and prettier than ever, for love is a great beautifier." (Little Women, Louisa May Alcott)

"It was not until she was standing in the vestry, smilingly watching the best man (Ralph Pent-Hartigan) kiss the bride, that Flora felt an unusual sensation in the palm of her right-hand glove. She looked down at it, and saw to her surprise and amusement that it was split right across. She realized then that she had been extremely nervous lest anything go wrong. But nothing had; and now she was extremely happy." (Cold Comfort Farm, Stella Gibbons)

"Only the margin left to write on now. I love you, I love you, I love you." (I Capture The Castle, Dodie Smith)

The wedding was beautiful. Best wishes, Emily, and congratulations, Joshua.

Acoustic therapy

When I'm feeling depressed or down on myself, or even if I'm just tense, the swiftest cure is a generous dose of Nat King Cole. He has a rich, smooth baritone voice that is so relaxing and reassuring- like Kingsley Shacklebolt's speaking voice.
I wasn't seeking out acoustic therapy; I was just trying to find a good version of "The Very Thought of You" to share with L. Over the course of my search, I listened to Etta James', Natalie Cole's, and Billie Holliday's versions, but Nat King Cole's was the best. Then I just got sidetracked. As I listened, my forehead smoothed out, my shoulders relaxed, and I breathed evenly. It was lovely.

Hey!

I just remembered something!
I just remembered why I had no problems with skipping youth group for four weeks!
Nobody there likes me!

I don't think anybody dislikes me, but they never say anything to me, or smile at me, or acknowledge my presence in any way. They respond when I do one of those things, but not otherwise. It's depressing.

Maybe I should just keep going to Mass.