Towards the End

The weather’s been nice but today it’s cloudy and looks like it might rain.  I’m by the window for light and the heater for warmth, and wearing white because it’s spring or summer now, you can tell because the days are long and when it rains it’s humid rather than cold.   So here we are, towards the end and working harder than ever.  I’m going to write a paper for Kunin at nine, and then when that’s done I’ll go back to the forever project of thesis.  I’ll go to the library to work on the thesis.  These things must be done.

Because everyone’s working and because of Israel’s wireless internet being horrible, I’ve had few breaks in the last week.  I’ve worked and worked and worked and that’s been all; I left London seven days ago, and will go back in five months.  My thesis will be done in one week, but the project it represents will never be done, I suppose.  And without more breaks (because I see people very rarely here, it seems, these days, because of work, and when I do I feel guilty, both for not working and because they’re not working) work gets tiring, though the Donne paper I write this morning is a pleasant break from reality in Shakespeare.

This is all that’s up here.  As soon as I finish my thesis I start an extreme health regime and I clean out drawers a bit, to get things ready to move out easily in a few weeks.  In reality, when I finish my thesis, I have to sort out deferring Harvard and confirming King’s, and turning in King’s housing forms, and turning in funding applications.  Yes,  that’s the next project, about which I’m not too too excited, but it too will get done.

 

Qaud

Today on the quad I heard a girl yell “Eleanor, David”.  That’s odd.

 

Ray from the Post Office

Me:  I want to mail this so it will be there in five days.

Ray:  We can’t do that.

Me: (Suspicious, because Ray had told the last two people he served ahead of me that he couldn’t do their things, either) Really?

Ray:  Yeah.  Go two doors down to Fedex, they can do it.

Me:  Okay.

Me:  I want to mail this so that it will be there in five days.

Fedex:  We can do that, but so can the mail, and it’ll cost you $50 here, and only $25 there, so you should probably do it there.

Me:  Oh, thanks.

Wait in line hoping not to get Ray again.

Me: I want to mail this so it will get there as fast as possible.

Ray: But not using expressmail.

Me: Is express mail the fastest way?

Ray:  Yes, with express mail it will get there in about two days.

Me: Well then I do want that.

Ray: Ooooooo….fine.

Me: (It’s February 25th) So that will get there on the 27th (I’m checking to see if it will get there on the 27th or 28th).

Ray:  It’ll get there on the third.

Me:  What?  You said two business days.

Ray:  Yes, two business days, so it’ll get there on the third.

Me: 28th?

Ray: THIRD.

Me:  But two business days is the 27th or 28th.  It’s Monday February 25th.

Ray: BUSINESS DAYS.

Me:  But Tuesday and Wednesday are business days.

Ray: Okay.

Me: Could you put it in the bucket so it goes out today?

Ray: I can try, but the mail is picked up at three (it’s 11:00 am).

Me: Okay.

 

Portland for the Avant Guarde

You may not know it, but Portland, Oregon, is a city on the edge of hep.  The people there dye their hair, or if they don’t, they certainly don’t wash it.  Portland is so far past the silly punk days of it’s Northwest rival (Seattle) that not only are the young and trendy of Portland not piercing their noses and eyebrows, they’re not even piercing they’re ears any more.  Holes are just to cliche’ at this point.  It’s true.

My childhood has become trendy.  The guy who wrote Fight Club is from Portland, and he wrote a book about the city that points out everything hep, and it’s where I grew up.  It’s everywhere where I grew up.  It’s the hardware store we bought our bathtub at.  Dude, we were so avant guarde.

There’s a Bloomsbury class at Pomona.  They’re the kids in Creative Writing classes with David Foster Wallace and who go to Julia’s (and my) parties and who have read Kant, maybe who have read Kant for fun.  Oh! Everyone’s read Kant.  You can’t use Kant as a measuring rod anymore.  You know who the young intellectual elite are at Pomona.  They’re not just smart elite.  They’re intellectuals.

The intellectual elite has heard that Portland has a great creative writing community.  It has also heard of Powells Boooks (which, by the way, has gone way-down hill since my childhood, but then so has a lot of Portland), where the intellectual elite of the larger metro community can gather.  They haven’t heard, but the Pearl District is full of apartments to live in, these days, and the city really is becoming a ball of trend.

I’m warning you know: the new lost generation isn’t lost, it’s at the end of the Oregon trail.  Portland’s the Paris of 1920 and the New York of 1960.  The creative writing aware are moving there, and what’s more, this newest trend is visually obvious.  Bloomsbury has relocated.

I’m very excited to be aware of the movements of Bloomsbury.

 

Thanksgiving

I’m getting nervous and so am starting to make lists.  What I’ve got to do over Thanksgiving is write a Mann paper on Samuel Johnson’s forward to Shakespeare, and write a chapter of my thesis, probably the one on messengers and soothsayers, because I’m putting of that damn chapter full of definitions.  If I do this before Sunday, I can spend all of Sunday reading, which would be awfully pleasant, amongst other things.  Furthermore, if I do this, the last couple of weeks here arn’t too too bad, in that they just have one more thesis chapter, a Dickens paper, and a V. Woolf paper, plus all the assorted reading that goes with that.  Yes…and I’ve got to finish applications for the future, oh, the future is damn haunting, and this is just true.  This is the thing: I’m tired of Pomona and I want to go home now.

It’s been a very effective semester; I’ve behaved almost entirely as I would want and have been quite good.  Though I haven’t been quite as productive as I often am, this is because several projects I engaged in I tried to engage in with massive quality.  We shall see how that quality works out, and if it doesn’t, well, if it doesn’t it probably means it shouldn’t, because if my efforts towards massive quality can’t get me to achieve what I’d like then I probably shouldn’t achieve it anyway.  This is just true.

Anyway, regardless of slightly limited productivity, I’ve been very healthy this term (not in terms of health, in fact my health has been quite poor), but I’ve been very calm-ish and very fit, and as always my wrists are quite thin.  I’ve been relatively happy (something that is sometimes tricky at Pomona) and focused on what I’m trying to do, and though I’ve been distant from people, this is perhaps just stopping to play along with some of what is ridiculous at Pomona and returning to normalcy.  I can’t wait to return entirely to normalcy, and it’s been very nice being calm and pleasant, rather than dealing in gossip and drama.  This is just true.

No, it’s been a decently productive term, and I’ve learned some quite important things (like cutting documents to a certain number of words) .  Very happy life is well within sight, and current life, though work oriented, is not unhappy. I recognize what I don’t like about student life now, what is genuinely less good than regular life, and I believe I see quite a likely end in sight, and so this is nice. This is very nice. Yes, many good, calm, strange things, and time passes.  It should be a fine Thanksgiving; I hope I use it productively.

 

Very Social and Lonely

This is what I’ve found; I’ve found it’s no good (and this is pop-philosophy and for that I’m sorry) to be very social, or rather just being very social isn’t enough.  You’ll still be lonely if you see lots of people all the time.  What makes you not lonely is to see a few people often.  If you can just see the same person at the end of every day you’ll be okay; if you see fifteen or twenty-five or thirty people over the course of a day you’ll just have had many short conversations that weren’t too substantial.  Even if the conversations you’ve had were substantial, you are lacking a base, there is no continuity in your experience.  You’ve got to develop continuity.  This is just true.  This is the problem with Pomona this year.  I see too too many people and so am too lonely.

 

Eric

My Mother: Then little Ulys ran to get the cat…

Me:  You’re calling the dog Ulys now?  What, is that short for Ulyssus?

My Mother:  I suppose it might be.  His last name is Stableson.  I’ve named him Ulys Stapleton.

Me:  Why does the dog have a last name?

My Mother:  Because there was an attorney in Klamath Falls who was a real little annoying guy named Ulys Stableson.  He’s named after him.  Do you want to talk to dad?

Me: Sure. [To my father] What, have you named this dog Ulys?

My Father: Um…no.

Me: My mother told me you were calling him Ulys.

My Father:  Most of the time I just call him Hank.

Me:  But is his name Hank?

My Father:  Well, if you look at him, most of the time you just want to say Frank.  Some woman at the beech suggested Rocky; we could name him after Desi’s sister’s ex-boyfriend and call him “Rocky”.

Me:  No.  Call him “Ricky” after Eric the Viking.

My Father:  I don’t think they ever called Eric the Viking “Ricky”.

 

Transfered from an Intrum Weblog

Sleep

Sep 30th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

You could sleep through almost everything at Pomona.  I’ve always known this, too, and freshman year I’d stay up really late, until three and four in the morning, chatting in Nina’s room, waiting to be present when something important happened.  I didn’t want to miss anything, and I always did miss things, everything important happened after I went to bed.

Still everything happens after you could go to bed.  You could go to bed at 11:00.  This is after the Fox 11 News at 10 would air at home, and it’s a legitimate time to sleep.  Of course these days work won’t let you, but just from a practical perspective, it could be done.  And you would miss everything, and it would be healthy.  All the things people do to be ridiculous happen after 11:00.  Everything hurtful people will do will happen after 11:00.  All the drama will happen at 12:00.  You’d be safe.  And you can see people during the day.  You can go to meals with them and chat with them and they’ll be around and about.  You’ll miss the deep conversations and pop-philosophy, but you’d be all the better for it, like as not, because the deep conversations are themselves a social ploy, a mode of imposing drama onto interaction that is, after all, unsubstantive.

This is not true in life.  In life you should go to bed when ever you want.  At Pomona, however, you’ll be far happier if you go to bed at 11:00.  Just get up early and finish your work and save yourself a lot of fuss.

Rememberence of things past…

Sep 27th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

Time, Proust will tell you, is tricky.  I don’t have enough of it, and my head hurts because of it.  I don’t sleep enough (no one does; I’m no harder than anyone), and it’s making my head hurt.  These things are true:

I like running a lot, and I like the full moon.

I don’t mind my thesis.

I’ve got to finish the Cambridge application before it kills me (kills me).

I’ve got papers all over my room.

My head hurts and I want to sleep.

I love chatting.

Everything’s worrying me all the time.

I will be very much calmer by December 1st, when everything is due.

I wish you crazy peace.

To Be Fair…

Sep 24th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

Oh I look forward to living in normal environments again.  It’s funny here.

So, Yom Kippur is tricky, right, because it makes you very aware of all the ways you to wrong by other people and wrong by the world, which is excellent good.  It’s good because all the social whatnot that kills me here is probably just as reflexive as anything.  I’m sure for all the times I’m snapped at I snap, and for all the insensitive things and hurtful things and things that are around are done as often by me as anyone, and so this is good and important to know.

Oh! Pomona’s ruined me! It really has.  I’m so nervous here in a way that I’m just not at home and wasn’t so much at Cambridge, and this is because people get angry here.  It’s too small, and there’s nothing else to do, and so people get angry.  And no one’s gotten angry yet, but it kills me, because it scares me, because I hate hate hate when people get angry, so I spend all of life trying not to make people angry.  And the thing is, this isn’t even being paranoid or unreasonable, because people are angry at each other here all the time! And it’s just too much to think about, it really is, and this year has been far better than most because, for whatever reason, I’ve been less worried about life in general (probably because I have work to beat the band and because I’ve been in England where people just arn’t mad at you and I’ve been at home where everything is fine, so it’s become clear that all the worry they put you through here is made up and ridiculous) but still it kills me because everything, everything, is followed in your mind by “I hope they took that well”, and “I hope that didn’t annoy them all to heck”, and “oh, I just didn’t mean to be so very ever-present, I hope they’re not tired of me”.  I hate thinking about how I hope people arn’t tired of me!  But of course it’s a reasonable thing to consider, because of course I am tired of people at times, so it’s all quite fine, but gosh gosh gosh! I can’t take it at all.

There are whole genres of life where you never do have to think about whether people are tired of you.  Because people don’t really get tired of you, because they shouldn’t, because what does that even mean, and people don’t even really get tired of you here, not if you’re quiet, but you have to worry, because they may well, and then they’ll be too mean.

It’s all a shame.  It’ll turn my hair white for sure.

Computer Virus

Sep 24th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

The poor computer’s got a virus, which is such a downer, but alright, because they’re fixing it as we speak.  When it is healthy, I believe it will be a ball of good luck.  I think it’s good luck in general, though it’s a replacement for the original, real, computer, and though it has had many many problems in the past.

Claremont

Sep 23rd, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

Remember freshman year, when Nina and Fredio used to take napps together every afternoon and we used to stay up until 3:00 even though we had chemistry at nine and had to run before that because there wasn’t time after?  Remember Alex Cohen and how he used to know us, not to mention the rest of the boys, and how we didn’t know anyone outside of Harwood, really, because we where afraid of people who weren’t subfree, and we couldn’t tell who was subfree in other dorms?  It was odd.

So now this is a funny year.  It’s a lot of it a funny year because we don’t live on a hallway but instead on a balcony.  Our balcony is full of excellent people, to be sure, though they took the furniture from our outdoor living space.  All the people we’re nearby are friendly and social and it’s all quite good, though we hardly talk to anyone these days that we talked to freshman year.  That’s good though, because the people you know freshman year are just the people proximally located to you, they’re not necessarily the people you should know or would try to know, given other options.  I mean, we’d have still tried to know them; they were fine people, but we know just as good people now.

It’s a funny year because we’re all so tired and tired of being here and tired of the ridiculous liberal arts scene.  We’re quite fond of eachother but ready to quit Claremont, so we’re all working hard to get out.  Our focus on going our separate ways has made it sort of clear that we’re not to worried about eachother, exactly.  We’d like our friends to be happy and succeed in life and maybe even come to our weddings if we get married soon enough after school gets out for that to not be weird, but we’re also ready to make new friends and do new, real, things, and to be, again, as an individual rather than a member of the Pomona College community.  We’re all done caring about facebook.

It’s always noisy here and the noise always comes from a voice you know.  It’s never quiet, and it never will be, and you’ll always know everyone.  Knowing everyone is fine, as is noise, but it’s very odd and not like the rest of the world.  We’re ready for the rest of the world.

Traditionally everyone in Claremont is always lonely.  They’re lonely because they can’t find the people they’re supposed to spend time with, though this is a funny construction, because everyone’s around.  People here now are finally done being lonely.  They know, now, for the first time, that these aren’t the people they need anyway, and that spending time looking for them is spending time preparing for the past, rather than preparing for the future, which just doesn’t make any sort of sense.  Everyone has felt this in unison.

So it’s finally more normal here, but in an odd way.  The people who still make noise aren’t doing so because they found the friends they’ll have forever, but rather because they realize they never did do that, but they’ve spent such a long time trying that they’d better keep pretending.  These may be the best years of their lives.  Everyone always said so.  Still, most people here are forging forward quietly, unable or unwilling to keep fussing, and are pretty insistent that this isn’t the best time of their lives.  It better not be.  They look forward to retirement.

Thesis

Sep 9th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

I now have a thesis weblog, which is going to be amazing, though perhaps a bit dull if you’re not inspired to redefine the precepts of modern literary criticism, but this weblog is at www.hannahcrumme.wordpress.com.  You’re going to love it.

2007-2008

Sep 8th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

It looks like it’s going to be an a-typical year at Pomona, which is fine, and which has complex origins, and which might be quite nice but may take some adjustment.

Pomona is usually a desperate search for activity.  Though there’s always homework, the desire to replace this homework with manic social functions is always very present in our minds.  It makes us all very nervous, and fills us with the need to be out of our rooms, in public places, and engaged in meeting people.  It’s exhausting and it’s ridiculous.  It’s also institutionally supported, and so there are a million social things to do, all of which are similar to each other, none of which is super-fun but all of which are fine.

Two things have changed this year, or at least two, anyway.  We’ve been abroad and on our own and we have thesis which holds our genuine interest.  Work is finally less petty, may even be valid, because it really is some major and substantive project that might even hold our fascination, irreverent though we may be about it.  What is more, having lived alone or in far more varied social scenes from Pomona, we’ve all come to understand that the manic socializing is unnecessary and unproductive.  It’s finally clear that it’s silly to go out every night, even if out is just to our friends’ rooms, and that we  must stay in and work.  I’ve done well in the past socializing as much as we do; I hope to do excellently better this year, socializing in a more comfortable scale.

So work is finally interesting and life is finally less ridiculous (though listening to me you’d still say “my goodness, you’ve all got such a lot of drama”) and we’re all finally living for the lives that are to come, rather than the life at Pomona.  It should be good.  It should be intensely productive and very pleasant and really still quite social.  It might even be sustainable.

Brocolli

Sep 6th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

Me:  Maddie, eat your brocolli.

Maddie:  I don’t want to.  I ate all my other broccoli.

Me:  All the more reason to eat this last broccoli.  It wonders why you ate all the other broccoli and not it.  It’s crying.

Maddie: Good.

Me:  I’m glad your not my mother.

Maddie:  If I where your mother, you’d never worry about broccoli crying in the first place.

Reel

Sep 5th, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

Me:  I’m reeling them in.

Maddie:  That was a movie camera motion.

Me:  Shut up.  Whatever, different kind of reel.

Cleaning and Packing

Aug 31st, 2007 by thematicallyconsistant | Edit

I’m very good at cleaning but I’m no good at packing.  Dang nab it all!

I will see you all in Claremont bright and early (way early) tomorrow morning.

 

End

The weblog is over now.

 

The Rest of Life

My Mother:  Well, Daddo, I hope that in the last third of our life we do something more substantial.

Me:  Do you want to make Irish movies?

My Father:  Do you want to move to Ireland?

My Mother:  I hope we’re done with all this petty, profit-making, work-focused stuff, and do something more real.

My Father:  Well, we’ll be done with working in about a year, and then we’ll be traveling the world, or something.  If Hannah goes back to England we’ll go there, and then when the weather gets back we’ll go somewhere else.

Me:  Like back to Oregon.

My Father:  Like Greece.

My Mother:  I was thinking of opening a pit-bull farm.

Me:  That would be substantial.

 

Extreme

Hannah Crumme: Oh man, now I’m excited for wilderness adventures with you, my friend. We’ll be rigerous.

“The Bergster”: well rigorous maybe is going a little far, but we’ll be out there, all right

Hannah Crumme: Precisely.

 

Weblog Stats

It’s amazing how many people get to the weblog by searching for “rent-a-goats, oregon”, “aude lang syne”, and “astrolgyzone.com”.  Also popular, of course, is some combination of “my dad, hat, California, Rudolf chicken” although why that’s a popular search is beyond me.

On August 1st I had 624 visits to the weblog, by far the most I’ve ever gotten.  I assume they where looking for astrologyzone.com.

 

Luck

I don’t know, I just don’t know.  I took the GRE again today (last time I’m ever taking that…yee-haw), and there was a computer error (the dang nabbed GRE is on a computer), and so they had to re-boot my computer, and it was supposed to start off where I had been, at 16 minutes left in the section, but rather it started back at 20.  I told them that, and they said “oh….that’s lucky for you”.  It was only so lucky, because the questions went back to where they had been at 20 minutes to go, also, but since I’d already done them I could do them again very quickly, and probably gained time.  I kept saying “I may have been advantaged by that”, and they kept looking at me blankly.  Another woman in the test, whose computer had also failed, said “My computer failed, and I don’t feel advantaged at all”, so that was luck.

The Modern Language Association sent me money today.  This has never happened before, in fact, as a rule, they take my money.  They sent me $45, which they say they’ve sent because I overpaid my dues, but I probably didn’t, because as a rule I get e-mails from them telling me I can’t pay the student rate for dues until I’m a grad student, and that I owe them five more dollars.  I almost never send the five more dollars, because I am a student.  This time I sent it, because I was in England, and didn’t need U.S. money anyway.  I certainly did not give them $45 dollars, but, again, I’m fine with it, and it was luck, too (although, of course, I’ll e-mail and ask them about it).

I also got flowers today.  This wasn’t luck, but rather very nice.  However, it was luck that I should know such pleasant people as would send me flowers, and so that’s good, too.

Strange day.  Also, it was way sunny.

 

Seafoam

I painted my cellular phone sea foam green today.

Me:  You know what you call this color?

My Mother:  Sea shoe?

Me:  Sea foam.

My Mother:  I think of Sea foam as being a bit greener.

Me:  You know what Kristen Jones’ favorite color was?

My Mother:  Yes.

Me:  What?

My Mother:  Panda.

Me:  That’s not a color.

My Mother:  Yes it is.  If I said “she was wearing a panda skirt”, wouldn’t you know what color it was.

Me:  It’d be black and white, but why wouldn’t that be zebra.

My Mother:  Because it would be white on it’s face and stomach.

Me:  It’s a skirt.

My Mother:  I don’t understand what the problem is here.  You said “what’s her favorite?” and I said “panda”.

Me:  Favorite color, favorite color.

My Mother:  Panda, panda.

 

Hold

My sister:  Dad, hold my hand.

My father:  No.  That’s the hand that hit me not five minutes ago.

My sister:  Dad, can’t you be like Jesus and forgive?

My father:  You be like Jesus and don’t hit.

 

To Fall, in Battle

Senior year, or Junior year, of high school we had to write transcendental essays about nature.  I titled one of them “To Fall, in Battle”, which I thought was very clever, because it’s like dedicating the essay to the season (we wrote four nature essays for the four seasons) that it was about, and also an acknowledgment of how fall is a battle between the life that is summer and the aging and whithering that leads to winter, and how summer eventually loses and gives way to winter.  I thought it was very clever.  I have a facebook album titled after that now, too.  Pretty much no one ever gets it.

It’s also an acknowledgment that Fall is, from an academic perspective, almost always damn hard.   About every fourth year you’re preparing to apply to schools again.  About every fourth year you are actually applying to schools again.  You’re always jumping into gear and organizing and gathering power.  It’s always darned hard.  And the thing is, you can either make it harder by hitting it like heck, and getting things done, and getting them done amazingly, and making decisions about what to do and doing everything you’ve decided on, or you can not, and if you don’t, it may well be easier or at least just as valid a choice, but I’ve never done that, and I’m not about to start now.

Nope, fall’s going to be damn hard-core, and I imagine I’ll write about all of it.  But that’s okay, you’ll love it, it’ll be frustratingly comical for you as a reader, I’m sure, and you’ll be relieved when it’s all over and we know what’s happening next year.

 

Talking Gates

Me:  …then we found this haunted gate which spoke to us.

David:  What did the gate say?

Me:  No trespassing.

David:  Oh.

Me:  Oh, sorry, no.  The gate we climbed over said “no trespassing”.   The haunted gate made whistling noises in the wind like “ooooooooo”.

 

Dunn Forest Road Revisited

The first time we ran at Dunn Forest road was the middle of a few winters ago, after it had been raining for 28 days straight, in the middle of the record number or rainy days in a row for the world, on the rainiest day of this period.  The road was awash in water, and it was basically running up a creek until we got a few miles up the road.  When we came back, I had horrible horrible poison oak.

Today we revisited Dunn Forest Road.  We ran up it, but rather than continuing with the road climbed a broken gate into a large pasture.  The pasture was filled with yellow milk weed and purple thistle, and lined with oaks and creeks and barb wire, and was a ball of picturesque.  It as also very prominently lined with poison oak.  The road leading up to the gate is littered in shot gun shells, as is to some extent the field, because the hunt up here in the winter.  To the right is about 1000 acres of Christmas trees, with a sign on the gate to them that says “No Tresspassing”.  Here we found a red-hawk feather.

We continue through the field and across a small creek, and then up a field of thistle and blackberry and nettle, all of which is kind of sharp.  We finally get to the top corner of the field, where, according to our calculations a road should be, but instead there’s a tiny trail going through a tunnel of poison oak.   My father went through the tunnel with the dog, only to discover that there’s nothing on the other side, so good to not go through.  We continued on.

We crossed a green swamp, and came to a haunted gate, which made horrifying creeking noises in the wind. The clouds where growing dark, and the gate was creeking loudly, and it suddenly occurred to us that the sharp plants, the gun shells, the swamp, and even the hills where probably haunted, so we high tailed it out of there.  It turns out Dunn Forest Road is just not the way to go, although it is very beautiful.  It’s got demons.

 

Pietas

Me:  That’s one strange dog.

My Father:   He’s dignified.  What about him is strange.

Me:  Most dogs that size don’t sit on people’s laps.

My Father:  He’s a pietas.

Me:  What?

My Father:  Do you know those pictures of the adult Jesus sitting on the Mary’s lap, kind of like a baby?  He’s like that.

 

Walk Like a Dog

So, if you talk about other people behind their backs you’re reincarnated as a dog.  This is definitely true; it’s called l’shonhara (if you’re taking Hebrew right now, perhaps you can let me know how that’s spelled).  I was walking and gossiping with Rachel Zeno in Portland, and I commented on how I would now have to be reincarnated as a dog.  She explained that I wouldn’t necessarily have to be, because you’re only reincarnated as a dog if your being malicious, or aligning people against another person, not for just conveying sentiment or information (it’d be a lot easier for me if this where true, and I’d be a dog fewer times over).  As we talked about this the lamp post began to say over and over agian, “Walk like a dog.  Walk like a dog.”  We looked around in alarm and confusion (first a whirl wind, then a burning bush, now a parking meeter…it makes the top hat sound so much more plausible and validates everyone at BYU), only to realize it was a lamp post saying “Walk sign is on, walk sign is on,”  so that we could cross the street, even without seeing the sign.

Watch out, or the lamp post will tell you you really mustn’t talk about people behind their back.

 

Seagull and Insole

My Father:  I was running on the beach, as one does, and when I finished running I took of my shoes to wade in the water.  I put the shoes on the sand and noticed there was a seagull next to them.  I wasn’t too worried, because what would the seagull do?  I’m now missing one insole.  I think the seagull took it.

Me:  It probably did.

 

Seamstress

I have an excellent dress that I’ve been wearing for about the last four years.  It’s disintegrating now, although it was the basis of the whole theme of my wardrobe, so much so that last summer I was called “Sundress Hannah” and the other Hannah was called “the other Hannah”.  If I could find a seamstress that would make this dress over again for me, I’d have her make it in about five different colors, and then I’d only wear that dress (or the dresses modeled on it) for life.  This is my current goal.

 

Astrologyzone.com!

I’ve been unimpressed for the last couple of months, but it’s a bad idea to have information about the future offered to you and not take it, so I guess I’d have to say read it.

 

Sky

In Oregon you look at the sky.  During the day it’s blue and as the sun sets it’s beautiful and in the night it’s full of stars.  In Los Angeles you ignore the sky, because in the day it’s brown, and at sunset the chemicals make it neon, and the three stars are fighters, but the fact that there are only three makes you a little worried.  This is just true.

 

Beginning of August

Okay, so, the last day of July.  Well, as always, August means some very specific things, so let’s address those, before we get so far into the month that it’s too late to go back.

As always, August means that it’ll be warm but cool in the morning.  It’ll be filled with the smell of blackberries and apples and figs.  It’ll be one of your golden hay months.  It’ll be warm, but the sun’s angle won’t be as strong; you’ll be less likely to get skin cancer.

August is a perpetuation of this period of flux that is killing me for the last year.  However, there’s now a quasi-plan or ideal, which just needs to be worked towards.  August is at home, and there’s very little to disguise the inevitability and shapelessness of the future here,  so the ridiculous anxiety/sadness associated with not knowing what’s going on is amplified here.  Almost everywhere else there are distractions that cover the need to do things to figure things out, but even better, cover the fact that things can’t be figured out yet, and probably there are several years of adventure before us before we know where we are, and even fill the time between now and knowing where we are.  At home it’s just very clear that all there is to do is plan and work towards plans, and once you’ve planned perhaps there’s nothing you can do but wait to enact said idea.

However, there is one very potent distraction, which is neither so effective nor so much fun as the distractions of all other places, but is true, and will be the issue in August.  There’s a lot of work that needs to be done.  August is 21 days long; in 21 days we’ll go to Boston, and from then on there’s no hope for work.  For the length of those 21 days I must get done as much as possible, not even because it’s good to get things done, but because it will make me terribly nervous not to.  I must work like heck, and go back to school a ball of accomplishment, because if I don’t the next 21 days will be longer than any, not because I’m bored, as my father would postulate, but because the dang nab inactivity (or rather fruitless activity, because I doubt I would be “inactive”) will allow way too much focus on the nebulousness of the future.

Boston will be an interesting week.

By the time I get back to Claremont, I should have enough work done to be able to focus like heck on the tangible aspect of figuring out the future (the applications for graduate schools that will have finally come out),  and to be able to refocus and regain the power and influence I gave up at Claremont through going abroad.  The fall will have plenty to distract me from the future, and this will let  me work efficiently and get things done.  It’ll be very helpful, all around.

Until the fall (which is only 21 days) I must work very hard on all fronts.  I wish you peace.

 

GRE

I learned today on the GRE that “erosion” is spelled with one “r”, and that “bureau” is spelled like that.  Why would they put tricky words like that on the GRE, when all they’re supposed to be testing is your ability to right a cogent essay?

 

Homeopathy

There are these two witches that live near our house.  This is where the conversation began.

Me:  I had a dream about those witches.

My Father:  Yeah.  The last I saw them was at the neighborhood block party they through.  I haven’t seen them since.

Me:  Me neither, although they have painted their bush red.

My Father:  I don’t think they’re like, evil witches, though.  I think they’re more like nature goddess witches.

Me:  Yeah, England’s full of nature-goddess witches.  Druids.

My Father:  Is that what this homeopath is like?

Me:  Um.  No.  Not really.  England seems to be covered over with alternative medicine types.  It doesn’t seem to make them crazy in England; I knew three separate people whose parents where practitioners of non-conventional medicine.

My Father:… I cured my toe with turmeric.

Me:  What?

My Father:  The powder that they have a lot of in India.  They put it in food.

Me:  You cured your toe with turmeric?

My Father:  Yeah, it said in Scientific American that it was used as a natural cure, and that this might be right, and it might have anti-biotic properties, and my toe was infected and I couldn’t walk, so I took it from the spice rack and put it on my toe.

Me: …

My Father:  But you can’t just put it on your toe, because it’s a powder, and it would fall off, so you need to mix it with something, so I mixed it with that stuff…what’s that anti-biotic stuff?

Me:  Neosporin?

My Father:  Yeah, I made a salve with turmeric and neosporin, and I put it on my toe with a band aid, and it cured the infection.  It took a long time though.  It’s not a very good test of the turmeric, though, because it was two substances, and it could just as likely have been the Neosporin, but the infection did go away.  My toe’s been yellow now for a long time.  The turmeric dyed it.

Me:  I think it was probably the Neosporin.

My Father:  So there are homeopathic remedies out there.

 

Figs

There was a workman at our house today who had never had figs before.  He’s working on the siding right below the fig tree, which my mother recognized as just a shame, so she picked a fig (that wasn’t quite ripe, although it should have been, plenty of figs are ripe these days), and gave it to him and had him eat it.  He bit it, and sort of smiled, but didn’t necessarily seem to like it, and acknowledged it with a sort of “Mhm…” sound.  She said “no no, go ahead, keep eating”, so he bit it again, and again responded without major enthusiasm (probably because it wasn’t ripe), but she kept encouraging him until he’d eaten the whole thing.  He was left with the stem in his hand (a fig stem is a lot like part of the fig), and my mother said “oh, that’s fine, just throw it on the ground”, and he said “that’s right, the dog’ll probably eat it”, and she looked at him quite seriously and said “the dog’s not that dumb”.

Oh well, we feel bad about it, we don’t think the fig was ripe, but he’d never had a fig before…

 

Fight

My mother:  I just hope you never challenge anyone to a fight, because you’d definitely loose.

My father:  Maybe you’d win against a small child.

My mother:  A really small child.

(I’ve  probably challenged half the people I know to fight, and, although I’m rarely taken up on it (yet to be taken up on it with one exception) I’m pretty sure I could take you down.  Old man.)

 

New Yorker

The summer fiction in the New Yorker has been far less compelling than the fiction the last time I was home.  However, the New Yorker is teaching my father to be a tycoon, so it’s okay.

 

Office of the Future

Dude.  Pomona College has, like pretty much every college an office dedicated to career development and graduate school advice and admitions.  This office, an office Pomona, like all schools, boasts about, has so far been the definition of unhelpful, so much so that I can’t really even begin to delve into their inefficiency, ineffectiveness, and basically dishonor given their position and purpose.  Oh man!  It’s basically tear-provoking!  Thank gosh for the resources and the help I have (all of which lay outside this office and most of which lay outside Pomona), and thank gosh for finding a goal relatively early in the summer to work towards, and thank gosh for what little driving spirit I have of my own, because with out this I’d be up a creek.  I can not begin to emphasize enough my disappointment in this one key area of Pomona’s college, this element that is, perhaps, the most significant in that it is the alumni of Pomona and the futures they make that makes Pomona worthwhile (and whose generous giving funds Pomona’s current students).  I offer sever, sever criticism.

That said, I will forgive them in a second if they’ll just help me in the future please oh please oh please.

 

Exercise Machine

My Father:  I’ve never seen any sort of advertisement for a face exercise machine, and I recognize this is a hole in the market.  You know what we have to do.  This is an opportunity.  It’s an internet opportunity.  I’m going to put it on the internet, with some sort of thing where you can’t see it until you pay with a credit card.

Me:  You don’t know how to do that.

My Father:  We need to find a spokesperson with  a flabby face but a very fit body.  We’ll say “How are you going to get dates with a face like that?”.  Everyone’s worried about their face.  Or we could just get John Basdow, fitness celebrity, and paste that republican candidate’s face onto his body.  What’s that republican candidate’s names?  Right.  John McCane.  And so that we’re fair and honest we’ll put in small letters at the bottom of the screen “John McCane’s head, John Basdow’s body”.  Then we’ll slowly show how our face exercise video changed John McCane into John Basdow, whose face is really defined.

 

Ninty-nine

We’re 99 views away from 10000 visits to the weblog.  Yee-haw.  Get on visiting the weblog people, so we can get to a whole new digit.

 

Revisited

I think there are weblog chapters called things like “Aude Lang Syne” and “A period so like the present period”, that bespeak the philosophies and goals I had when I set out on sort of definable periods (the period of Abroad and the period when I started having the weblog), and they’re both in sort of an alarming rhetoric of adventure that concerns me.  I want to emphasize that I ever and increasingly have no desire to seek adventure.  My goal now is normalcy.  I look forward to consistency, I look forward to routine (because there are all sorts of fun routines guys), and I look forward to order.  This isn’t to say that I don’t foresee an awful lot of change.  Obviously in the next year there’s a lot to be done that will set the future up, and from there the next two to five years (please G-d not more than five years, but more if must be) will be moving, and sorting out jobs and finishing education and finding longer lasting friend groups and setting up life as it will be.  And it’s not even that life after that won’t change.  Obviously there’s change after change, but hopefully there will be increasingly solid elements.  Change can be fun, but the perpetual change that defines a life of adventure isn’t really so good as previous weblog posts seem to indicate I must have thought it is (I don’t really think I ever much thought this; I think I was telling you this because there weren’t many other options; hopefully someday soon there’ll be a momentum away from entropy).

My mother’s insurance salesmen was complaining at her that he didn’t remember the last ten years, that he must be so old, because his divorce was a decade ago, and since then he doesn’t remember a single notable thing.  He’s obviously exaggerating.   Of course, very few things that are noteworthy are noteworthy enough to mention when you’re dealing with a decade.  A sunny day is noteworthy, but you don’t bring it up when you’re talking in terms of a decade.  Even a new job is noteworthy, but in terms of a decade, it might not be.  You’ll notice where his decade starts, with his divorce.  Things that will stand out in a time frame as large as a decade are major losses or major gains.  You’ll remember your marriage, the birth of children, the death of loved ones, moves that have meant you lost friends or otherwise majorly changed situations.  What else?  Once we’re stable and set up, it’s not so bad if we don’t remember things from the decade.  I look forward to remembering excellent things from the day.  I look forward to saying “and the day was peaceful, and we lived quietly in happiness, fussing productively and “hanging” with our friends”.  We’ll never say that when we say “what happened this ten years”, but we may say it at the end of the day.

So adventure, or whatever our period of wandering is, is good.  It’s what we have and it’s not bad; it gives lovely perspective and shapes our identity and exposes us to new options and gives us good points of reference.  I wouldn’t have life without a period of “adventure”.  It’s not so bad should it get over with eventually, though.

 

JCC

My Sister:  I don’t like all this Judaism with the English kid and stuff.

My Father: I like Jewish people.

My Sister:  You don’t know any Jewish people.

My Father:  I like the people at the JCC.

My Sister:  Like who?

My Father:  I like the Hockleys, and I like the Corbleys…

My Sister:  The Corbley’s aren’t Jewish.

My Father:  I like Emily Roth’s mother.

My Sister:  Aso not Jewish.  You didn’t even know about any of the Jewish stuff we used to do…

My Mother:  Now Eleanor, stop it.  Let me tell you this:  Hannah likes the Judaism.  She likes the ritual and the custom.  She likes meeting people at synagog and doing shabbat.

My Father:  Yeah, you used to do shabbat.

My Sister:  No I didn’t.  You don’t even know what we did on shabbat.

My Father:  Sure I do.

My Sister:  What?

My Father:  Make the bread and stuff.

Me:  I’m going downstairs, call me when it’s time to go to Salem.

My Sister:  I could take you down.

My Mother:  Like heck you could.  Oh, yeah, you could take Hannah down, I thought you meant me or your father.

My Sister:  I could take down dad.

 

Seven Mile Loop

The way the seven (6.75, but who’s counting) mile loop works is you run up hill for a mile and a half, then down hill for a bit over three miles, then a about two miles of up hill mixed with flat.  This gets you to a gravel quarry filled with slime, water, and neutes, for your dog to swim in, and then a quarter mile and you’re done.

They’ve logged a new bit right at the beginning of the last two miles, that’ll throw you way off, because you’ll think you’re closer to the top of the new hill than you are (because you’ve gotten to the clearing so quickly).  This is always a downer.

It’s a good run and it’s a classic, made more classic, I suppose, by the newly imposed clear cuts, which mean that it affords wonderful views.

 

E-mail

My Father:  What’s up now?

Me:  I’m going to check my e-mails, then go to bed.

My Father:  I don’t know about this e-mail stuff.  I mean, if they’re not there talking to you, how do you know it’s even real?  It could be a bunch of space aliens writing it to you.  It could be a bunch of people in China, just reading it and responding to it, and changing it and modifying it, just to, just to mess up the world and make it all complex.

 

Secrecy

The news said it was going to tell us next about how government secrecy had escalated in the past couple of years, and how this was bad for the population and what not.  They where going to tell us what new things where secret, and how this would effect the efficiency of the government.  Just as the news was going to tell us how there where all these secrets, the power went out.

I’m not saying the government controls either the media or the power, or that they would effect these to keep secrets from us.  I’m sure the power went out because of summer lightening somewhere.  My only point is, who controls the lightning?

 

River Runs

Yesterday we went running along the famous path by the Willamette River, that starts under the bridge in Albany.  First we ran by a man who was sleeping in a red sleeping bag with a large blue bag, long-ways on the path (so that he went with the path in sort of a parallel imposed line; you didn’t have to jump over him), then we found some people by the river burning things, then we found underwear on the trail.  This is how it goes when you run in Albany.

 

English Accent

(David is from England; he has an English accent).

Me:  So you asked David about his prime minister?

My Mother:  Yes, and he answered very intelligently, but I couldn’t understand a word  he said.

Me:  Oh.

 

Swastika

Me: (holding up a carved swastika in an antique shop)(looking questioning).
Antique Dealer: That’s not the bad kind of swastika, it’s the good kind, it’s from China.
Me: You mean it’s from India. Hitler took the swastika from India. He also took the idea of an Aerian race from their history.
Antique Dealer: China?
Me: You mean India.
My Sister: You know, Hitler kind of ruined the swatika. You should probably just stop trying to sell it, because, I mean, it just looks like a swastika. Do you really want to have to tell everyone who comes in your shop that it’s not the bad kind, it’s from India?
Antique Dealer: China?
Me: India.

 

Red River Valley

Today at my run I saw a wedding.  The bridesmaids wore red, as did the bride.  You could tell she was the bride by a white vale.

I ran up the hill, and followed signs that happened to trace my usual route, to what was identified as “Memorial for Kirk”.  The Memorial for Kirk had a red truck and a white truck, and that was all.

Towards the end of the run I go over a small bridge over a creek, and today, under the bridge, was a girl in a white-sports top and red shorts.  She was talking on a cellular phone, so I didn’t ask her if she needed help.

Red and white, huh?

 

Michael Moore

Michael Moore’s documentary, as all of his documentaries, left the theater in tears.  It also, like all his documentaries, began with a major focus on a horrific statistic from Oregon.  We’re vaugly proud to have made it into all three movies, because it shows how tough we are, as well as how incredibly statistically poor we are as a state.  We’re really bad at looking after people.

As always, there where a few people crying really loudly in the theater, which, for Oregon, is embarrassing, because we’re proud of how tough we are, and even if we know the world’s bad, we’re proud that we do nothing about it, but suck it up, even if it is tough, because we can.

This is why we resent Canada.  We resent Canada because they’re nice, honest, and caring.  We know you could be, but it’s weak, and un-American, to do things the easy way.   Americans are nice, but if they’re too nice, no one will have to suck it up and toughen up, and that’s hard for us to swollow.

Increasingly, however, that sounds ridiculous, and frankly dumb.  Self-imposed, gain-less sucking it up is weak.  It’s not efficient.  We feel bad about it.

My parents are ready to elect Jon Edwards, move to France, the U.K., or Canada (but not Canada because we just couldn’t do that…it’d be too far), and be generally put-off with the U.S.  It’s a shame, but it’s also just true.

 

Skirt

Me:  You know that skirt I have that matches your pants?

My Mother:  Yeah.

Me:  Do you want it?

My Mother:  No, it’s too small for me.

Me:  I think it’s cursed.

My Mother:  Really?

Me:  Yes.

My Mother:  Give it to Goodwill.

 

the Nemisis of Mytic Cat

(If you don’t remember Mythic Cat, look it up by searching “Mythic Cat” in the search bar.)

We where walking up Todd Road today, and we saw a dust-coloured, entirely black cat.  The cat had mint green eyes, and no pupils (because of the sun).  It looked evil.  Because I was thinking ‘well,  that cat’s cursed’, I said “it’s probably really nice” (because what if someone thinks I look evil, I hope they say “she’s probably really nice”).

I walked up to the cat, and it said nicely “meeow, meeow, meeow” and I said “see, it is really nice”, but just as I said this, it said (at the same time, but in a different voice) “growwell”  I jumped back, in alarm, and said “Oh no, it has two voices”.  I bet it a couple times (because what if someone some time thinks I have two voices and is scared), and ran away.

I’m pretty sure it’s a devil cat, though.

 

The West

There’s a mystique and a noble dignity that belongs to the west, that is missing in about all other places.  This mystique rests mostly in myth and legend, but also in the mindset of the people as it melds with the empty expanses.  I think a certain amount of it comes from the idea that, if pressed, in the west you can be entirely alone, alone from people or from development or from history even.  In the west there are whole expanses (and massive expanses) that are not only free from people and development, but which have always been free from people and development.  Not which are necessarily unseen, but which are so uninteresting that anyone whose been there has stopped and marveled at the vastness of the place, and moved on, and it’s never been anything.  In the west you’ll likely be in a place like this at some point.  You’ll stop and look at it, and it’ll be normal, and the same thing we’ve all done, and it will be alone and secure in beauty and in wasteful purposelessness.  Even the beauty of the west doesn’t serve much purpose.  It’s around and everywhere, and the hey fields that stretch to the hazel nut orchards that come to the fir hills into the snow mountains and over into the high desert all just are, and arn’t for an aesthetic, and the aesthetic isn’t even interesting enough to us anymore for anyone to think anything of it.  It’s just there, like the west.

Oregon’s board of tourism has been taking out massive adds in the New Yorker (three or four pages long), that advertises that, besides natural beauty, Oregon has art.  This is an entirely mis-guided project, because Oregon has almost no art that there isn’t a better version in New York.  Single blocks in New York will beat all the art in Oregon all to heck.  But it seems so uninspired to say “come to Oregon, we have hills”.  We know the east wouldn’t get our hills anyway.  They’d come and marvel and say that our natural beauty was unique, and breathtaking, and that they’d never seen anything like it before.  We’d think “look around; every thing’s like it.  It’s not breathtaking, it’s what you’ve got to walk over to see the next valley that’s exactly like this one.  It’s just life.”  So we advertise our art.

The people, too, in the west are unique and almost undefinable.  Everyone says the pace is slower in the south and people are more relaxed, or that there’s amazing efficiency in the cities of the North East, but how’s the pace in the west?  It’s not slower; there’s as much getting done.  There’s more getting done, because the technology’s in the west, as is all the agriculture and all the development; nothing’s built anywhere else but corruption and automobiles and politics.  But it doesn’t seem like anyone’s doing anything, and if you ask them what they’re doing they’ll say nothing.  The people in the west are doing things but they don’t know what, because that’s how it goes, too, you just do things, but they’re not things you know you’re doing, they, too, are just life.  It’s how it goes.

At the end of the day the effervescent west is what’s left.  The west owns the sun set, as well as the mountains and the coast lines from where the sun set can be seen.  And they don’t even notice this.  They don’t realize that everyone else is still up.  In New York they go to bed at the same time they do in Seattle, because the people in Seattle just go to bed.  They don’t know, that’s just what you do.  Why would you stay up?  In New York they know they’re doing something and they don’t want to stop, so they’re still awake in the dark as the sun sets over the Pacific.

The west is mythic.  It’s tougher than anywhere else in the U.S. but also ten times more gentile (they’re all practically Buddists and really wouldn’t hurt a fly).  This is just true.  We wish you peace and tranquility and an open range to roam.

 

Security Guards

Ironically, my sister, as the complainer for the town, has become the only person who talks to the Extreme Makeover Home Edition security guards, and thus their only friend.  They seek her out for conversation.

 

The Paper

Today the headlines in the paper included a story about one astronaught, who had been dating another astronaught, attacked (with pepper spray) another scientist who was also dating the (male) astronaught, because she wanted to make sure the scientist knew that she and the male astronaught would potentially be becoming a lot more serious after her divorce was finalized, a story about a man from Oregon who tied over 100 helium balloons (with a four foot diameter) to a lawn chair and floated nearly to Idaho (this story made national news, too; look it up, Oregon’s famous for some weird stuff nationally; no pictures are avalible of the flight, because after he landed he got up out of the chair and it floated away with the camera), and, of course, the story about this darned Extreme Makeover! Home Edition, which is increasingly bothering people, and has caused my sister to conclude both that ABC has a rule that they’ll only hire security guards from the south with facial hair that looks like that of Mr. T.  I argued that perhaps this is just what a sizable percentage of the security guard population looks like, but she’s pretty sure ABC has unfair hiring policies.  She’s also started a facebook group called “Brian Williams makes ABC’s Anchor look like a Klingon”.  She’s mad.  ABC gave her a special permit to drive on the closed road, because they where tired of her complaining every time they stopped her car (the permit goes on her dashboard).  She thinks the special permit indicates (and it does) just how little the road needs to be closed anyway.

And that’s the newspaper for today.

 

Raincoats

Over the 100+ degree Oregon day there’s a clear blue sky.  Oregon’s summers are pleasant, and train us in a way that catches us off guard when we travel.  When it’s hot it’s cloudless, because the sun needs to shine to hit the earth and heat it.  If there where clouds, it’d be cold.  Don’t give us none of this humidity.  We don’t know about it, and consider it a backwards kind of weather they’d only have in the East or the South or the Mid-West.  We’ve got progressive weather that makes sense.

Today I saw eight people with rain coats, even though the temperature is forecasted at over 90 for the foreseeable future, and even though the only clouds we’ll see for the next month come from field fires.  And these are Oregon people, too, with these raincoats.  I saw a man in a yellow rain jacket digging under blackberry bushes in the forest this morning, only to go into town and see a woman riding a bicycle covered in Denis Kusinich stickers wearing Birkenstock’s with jeans and a sweater and a knit hat and a blue Northface jacket.  There is some mis-understanding this year about the utilization of rain gear.

 

Diana Simpson

We’re pretty mad at our town’s sheriff, who allowed for the road to be closed and for this ridiculous publicity stunt.  Frankly, damn Hollywood Californians with their media.  We’re not amused.  The justification we’re always given for the road being closed is that the house their building is for the family of a girl with cancer.  Don’t you risk making it difficult for the girl to ever achieve anything better than her own illness?  If cancer is worth $500,000 in property value to her family, what more can she have to achieve?  Has ABC set a ridiculously high bar for this poor kid?

However, we’re all for giving a house to this family; no one begruges them it, and, frankly, it increases property values for the entire neighborhood, so we’re okay.  However, closing the road is ridiculous.  I mean, it’s ludicrously strange.  They allow you to drive on it during the day and have flaggers who wave traffic though.  Although the flaggers hold signs that say “slow” they look annoyed if you don’t drive faster than 35 miles an hour, although the road is a 25 mile an hour road under normal circumstances.  The place is crawling with police for this artificially-created emergency, although you can’t get a  cop out their if you call in a drunk driver or any other real danger.  You will be told “I don’t know if we can make it out there”, we know, we’ve tried.

We pretty much blame our Sheriff for this one.  She’s from California and she’s a show boat.  She’s for publicity.  She’s for jazz.  She’s for glamor.  Don’t give her convenience or actual public safety.

There was big issues about whether Home Depot should be allowed to build in Corvallis.  When they finally got their permit, look what our Sheriff allowed them to bring with them.  They’ve  made our otherwise quiet college town, that was looking forward to it’s ridiculous engineering-festival mid-summer (Da Vinci Days) into a single corporate commercial for a do-it-yourself store.  We’re not impressed.

 

Argument

My sister got in an argument with the security guard from ABC who was keeping the road closed.  Excerpts of it go like this:

My Sister:  Why’ve you closed the road?

Security Guard:  In case we need to put trucks in it.

My Sister:  There’s clearly nothing in the road, you could just let people go through it.

Security Guard:  We’re building a house.  What, do you live in this area?

My Sister:  Yes, and it takes me a lot longer to go home now, why don’t you just open the road?

Security Guard:  Don’t you care about kids with cancer?

My Sister:  No.  I had cancer.  It doesn’t mean you need to give them a house.  It certainly doesn’t mean you need to close the road.

Security Guard:  You can have a parking permit.

My Sister:  It looks like you have a tough job and you’re doing it cheerfully.  You’re standing out in the sun and it’s hot and it doesn’t look pleasant at all, and you’re cheerful anyway, and that’s very good of you.  You don’t need to close the road, though.

 

Iraq

Extreme Home Makeover, put on by ABC, is building a home down the road from us.  Because of this they’ve closed our most convenient route to town, in essence moving us another 15 minutes from Corvallis.  It’s off putting.

My Sister:  Now I know why the Iraqi’s hate us, and why they’re always bombing us.

Me:  Yes, because of Extreme Home Makeover…

My Sister:  Well, it’s really really annoying when they close roads.

 

Blog Stats

At the beginning of the month a lot of people come to this weblog because they’ve searched for “Astrlogyzone.com” on the internet.  This is a shame, because I recommend it highly, although I am not impressed this month, and wouldn’t want them to take the recommendation too seriously.  Sometimes Susan Miller is off.  Also, in many things there are a number of factors, so what she says isn’t the be-all and end all, even if it’s right sometimes.  Be aware that there are flaws, even in astrolgyzone.com (although I do believe you couldn’t find a better astrologyzone, short of the universe).

 

Psycic Tricks

My father threw the ball and my dog couldn’t find it, although it was by the third tree down the hill, in the first row of the orchard.  The dog was looking back and forth to the end of the orchard, but not by the tree.  My father yelled “Akbar, third tree to the right.”  The dog immediately ran down his row of trees from the first to the second to the third, and then came up a row to the ree under which the ball sat and found the ball.

My Father:  It’s not that he heard me say “third tree to the right”, I had to picture the concept of three and the tree, and he knew by my mental waves where the ball was.

I mean, he appears to be right.

 

Arrest

Me:  Wait, can they arrest you for talking about terrorism?

My Mother:  I guess.

Me:  Well, wait, what?

My Mother:   They shouldn’t.

Me:  Well, they’re talking about having arrested people for having written about potential ideas for attacking the U.S.

My Mother:  I mean, only if you’re the right kind of people.

Me:  Like not a citizen?

My Mother:  Well, no.  If you’re a Muslim from a Middle-Eastern country.

 

Bumper Sticker

Seen on a bumper sticker:

QUAKERS?  WHERE!

www.quakerfinder.com

(Does it seem like they put the exclamation points with the wrong words?)

 

To Do

I’m taking the GRE on the 30th.  I way-need to study for that now.

I’m taking the literature GRE in November.  I need to study for that too (by which I mean…read the Norton Anthology…oy).

I need to contact six more grad-schools.  This can be done pretty easily (won’t it be amazing when I can write “I’ll be going so and so where next fall”.   I need to contact everyone soon.

I need to write that damn thesis.

There are six grant applications I need to do.  These are mostly due October 1st.

I need to do those zarking Cambridge and Oxford applications.

I need to run like heck (as long as I’m in Oregon), and tire out the dog.

Just you wait; adventures are on the horizon.  This year will be damn amazing (last year in Claremont, California)(we assume), and will also bring tidings of my excellent adventures for next summer, next year, and for life, as I get those things square.  For the moment, I might just end up telling you what the GRE has to say.

I wish you all the peace I hope for for myself.

 

Heaven

My Grandfather:  Everyone wants to go to Heaven; nobody wants to die.  I don’t get it.

 

Fireworks

Me:  The fireworks drive those animals crazy.

My Father:  The animals are just sitting there.  The cats don’t even seem to notice; the dog seems minorly intrigued, but not crazy.

Me:  You’ve got to say that, though, it’s tradition.

 

Salt

My Father:  What’s all the white stuff on the ground?

Me:  It’s salt.

My Father:  Oh?

Me:  I tasted it; I wanted to see if it was glass or salt.

My Father:  Be careful.

Me: I couldn’t see any broken windows, so I figured salt, but I wanted to confirm.

My Father:  I mean, was it poison salt?

Me:  I hope not…

 

Nazi Encampment (Lawn Mower Shop) and Tree Surgeons, Lumberjacks, and Hey Farmers

So I found out where the Nazi’s hide, or they’re just the grandchildren of Nazis anyway, who themselves seem to be very friendly.  I found an Arien encampment, though, and it turns out they left the fatherland and headed to Corvallis Lawnmower Center.  It’s amazing.  The whole shop only stocks German gadgets (like Stahl products, and a company called “Arien”’s products) and Honda (which is also made in an axis country, although I generally support Honda), and is run entirely by an extremely blond (like way blond), tall, strong, blue-eyed crowd.  It’s different.  I was also in a bank today that had two “tree surgeons”, a lumberjack, and a hey farmer and his tractor driver in it, and no one else but the bank employees and my mother, a lawyer.  So it goes in Oregon.

 

Pine Trees

(from somewhere else)

In a western town, beneath the Northern Lights, where the pine trees pine for the fall of night…

 

Dentistry

If I’m not too bad at prejudice generally, I definitely seem to have it in for dental hygienists.  I just can’t even respect them at all.  I don’t know why.  I’ll have to do sensitivity training.

 

Vulture Saving Adventure

We were driving home from our intense and hard-core run today, and as we rounded the corner we came across a vulture just sitting in the middle of the road.  I said it was dead, but my father saw it wasn’t, so we pulled over to save it.  My father got the jumper cables and the ice-scraping device out of his trunk, and I watched for cars as the hazard flashers warned passing motorists that we might be trying to heard a seemingly stunned vulture from the road with jumper cables and an ice-scraping device.  The dog in the car ignored the whole scene.

My father finally got the vulture from the road to the ditch, when our neighbors drove by in their fancy red sports car.  They slowed way down and passed out flashing car, both looking at us with disgust and confusion on their faces (I assume not comprehending the situation and so in fact just being really confused by the jumper cables out in the middle of the road), then sped off.

My father worried the vulture had heat stroke, so he further herded it into the shade, then I got a bottle of water out of the car and he pored it on the vultures head.  We drove home.

Once home we determined we’d have to get vulture-saving equipment and return to capture the vulture and take it to the animal recovery center.  We got a box, we got jackets, we got a towel, and we got goggles, and we returned to the scene of the original rescue.

The vulture was gone.  Would that I could have told you about the second rescue, though, because it looked  like it was going to be dramatic.

 

J-Soc Garden Party

The Jewish Society’s garden party was in St. John’s scholar’s garden.  St. John’s has a rule this year that you’re not allowed to charge for garden parties, what the heck, they’re determined to charge.  Luckily, for most of the garden party the gate was being supervised by a nice porter, who let the Jews subtly take admittance fees and when ever they seemed to be doing so too obviously, or whenever the mean porter walked by, would just come over and talk loudly about the damn Jews lending money to people who had to pay them back for it today, right…wink…

 

English (American)

Me:  The English hate spell-check because of the “American English” option.

My Father:  Because they feel bad that they spell things wrong because they haven’t changed in hundreds of years…

Me:  Um…

My Father: In England.

 

Corner Groundhog

There’s a groundhog that sits on the corner (it’s a blind banked corner that is about 90 degrees), and there’s a groundhog that stands on the corner and watches everyone as they go around it at about 45 miles an hour, just to scare them a little bit more, because why not?

 

Un-Kosher Cat

My family has this little black cat which I believe was supposed to be named Roderick but ended up being named Tommy.  It’s losing weight (not the spelling of “losing”; I learn with time), which is odd for anything in our family except my father.  This worries my mother.

She noticed months ago that, like the cat Pumpkin, this cat can talk.  Unlike Pumpkin, who said “no” to get out of my tree-climbing lessons, though, this un-kosher cat says “ham”.  My mother started feeding it ham, too (you can get ham in a package), and it goes mad for the stuff.  It’s really odd.  Then we tried to put it in a cage to take to the vet, and it said “no”, so it’s on par with Pumpkin in vocabulary and then beats her two-fold.  So the cat’s not kosher, but it’s okay, because it’s probably not a Jew.

 

Grad School!

The trick now is to get into graduate school, and let me tell you, boy, that’s about as tricky as heck.

 

Beyond the Horizon

My father’s throwing the ball down the road, which is flat for about 200 yards and then suddenly falls off, for the dog.  The dog is getting tired, and I say to my father “you’re tiring that dog out”.  My father says “I know, but I just want to get the ball over the horizon, and then the dog will chase it over the horizon, and you’ll see the dog shoosh over the horizon”.  So he threw the ball and threw the ball, and the dog became more and more tired.

Finally the dog was so tired it sat down, but my father told it to bring him the ball, and it did, and my father tried really hard, and he threw the ball over the horizon and down the hill.

The dog went after the ball, but it was tired, so it didn’t go over the horizon with it, rather it went into a bush and pretended it thought the ball was there, but couldn’t find it.  I told the dog that that kind of behavior is disgraceful, and we went to look for it.  We couldn’t find it, though, and so the ball was lost over the horizon.

 

Bob Dylan

My Father:  I had this dream where these four people ran up to me and surrounded me, and the stuck a microphone in my face and they all yelled “ONCE UPON A TIME”.  Do you know where that’s from?

Me:  Snow White?

My Father: No, Bob Dylan’s song “Like a Rolling Stone”.

Me:  Oh.

My Father:  And I realized they where waiting to see what I would do, so I thought about the cadence of that next segment of the song, and then I started thinking, but I couldn’t remember the words very well.

Me:  Oh.  That’s weird.  You’d better look up the words of the song.

My Father:  I guess I’d better.

 

Shot

My sister and I got this blamed un-tested shot, for gosh knows what all, and it’s left us both terribally sore and with low-grade fevers.  It’s a shot against caner, which is good I suppose, but it came out only seven months ago and so certainly the long-term side effects are unknown.  Now days it’s law that you get it, if you live in Texas, even if it gives a low-grade fever.   I didn’t go running today, though, because the fever makes all your joints hert.  Dang nabed modern medical science.

 

Rounders

Me:  In England they have this game, and it’s like baseball, and all the rules are the same as baseball, except you don’t have to hit the ball to run, you just run whether you hit the ball or not, and if you ask them why this is and what’s the point of batting at all if you run anyway, they’ll tell you it’s because it’s harder to get you if you hit the ball, because no one knows where you’ll hit it to.

My Father:  That’s the stupidest game I’ve ever heard of.

 

Take Down

Me:  Wel, if it ever came to that, I would take her down.

My Mother:  You say that, but we all hope it never comes to that, because we all know you’re in fact very weak and could never take anyone down.

 

Cayot

My Father:  Last week I saw a cayote over around that corner.

Me:  Is that how you say that?  I been tellin’ everyone for years that in Oregon we say cayot.

My Father:…Yeah, that’s not how we say that.  But that’s okay.  Be free in your expression.

 

Albany

My Sister:  In Corvallis bike riders are environmetalists.  In Albany bike riders are people with DUI’s.

 

Mary Orange

When I was a kid I wanted to have three children and name them Mary, Orange (like the colour), and Slopper.  Poor Slopper.

This conversation is from today:

My Sister:  If I had kids, I’d want to name them Rock and Bell.

Me:  Those arn’t names, they’re words.

My Sister:  They’re good words. Rock is for a tough individual.  It’s a hard name.

Me: It’s a hard object.

 

Post

Don’t even try to UPS something from England.  The process will kill you.  It’s the most unnecessarily slow thing you’ve ever seen.  It doesn’t even test your ability to wait in line, because there’s no line, it just test your ablilty to wait.  Oh man, it nearly killed me.

 

Down River

Me:  So what’s up?

My Mother:   Yesterday the dog floated down river and we couldn’t get him out.  He kept getting out on the wrong side of the river, then getting in to swim across, and then floating back down river again and getting out on the wrong side.

Me:  He has to go farther up river so he floats to the right place.

My Mother:  He didn’t seem to see that.  Eventually hecame to the right side, but there was a tree in his way, or he was being willful, and so I had to wade in to get him out.

My Sister:  Grandpa asked to be euthanized.  Like you can just ask for it, to be euthanized.  And the next day I saw him and I said “I hear you asked mom to euthanize you”, and he said he didn’t remember asking that, and mom said “It’s a good thing I didn’t do it, then.”

Me:  I sent a letter to Margert and Attie.  [Margert and Attie are relatives we don't talk to and who don't talk to us].

My Sister: Why?

Me:  It was Atticus Theater in Greece, so I sent it and said to Attie “This is Atticus Theater, like your name.”

My Sister:  Well.  Apperantly you don’t understand the concept of estrangement.

 

Que

In England they’re proud because they are good at standing in line.  Ask them; they’ll tell you “no one knows how to que like an Englishmen”.  Everyone else in the world thinks ‘right, because we won’t stand for a line, we figure a way around the line’, but in England, it’s a point of pride.  They really know how to wait.

 

Hairdressing and Reality Equipment

On the way into London today we passed a large sign on a warehouse that said “Hairdressing and Reality Equipment”.  In London we followed the artist Mark Atkins along the Themes up through the East End (which, you know, has been entirely re-built), up to Wren’s memorial of the fire of London.  The artist told us how you can come out to the Themes and imaginne that you’re anywhere in the world, because it was the standard port by which all the ships reached England.

The idea that you can imagine that you’re “anywhere in the world” is lost on abroad students, who already are living the imagined reality of being somewhere strange and exotic, and they can tell you that, as long as thhe monolog they listen to from their internal voice is still American, then nothing forign is so strange, and that it’s no good imagining, because it will always be just as you imagined, even as you live.

So we walked from Limehouse on the DLR to Memorial Station on the District and Central lines, as well as the Northern line.  On the way out we figured out the sign had said “Hairdressing and Beauty Eqipment”.

 

Jump Rope

She jumped over the first rope (the rope dividing the restaurant from the side walk), which she arguably had to jump over.  On the other side of the path she jumped over the other rope.  This rope clearly did not have to be jumped, and in fact was inconvenient to go over.  We figured she was training for the hurdles for the Japanese team, for the 2008 Olympics.  Yep, this is what we figure, anyway.

 

Hairdresser

Hairdresser:  Your hair’s very thick.

Me:  What?

Hairdresser:  You have a lot of hair.

Me: Oh.

Hairdresser:  Have you ever thought of having it thinned.

Me:  What?

Hairdresser:  With thinning scissors?

Me:  Nope.  You see, in the states I work for the Jews, and they’re always saying to me “your hair looks nice, although I can tell you straighten it”, and I think “what?  No I don’t”, so I have to keep it thick, to keep up with the Jews.

Hairdresser:  Oh.

 

Fog or Light Rain

The fog we have now is the light rain we get in Los Angeles. Like Los Angeles it’s warm enough to be out in comfortably without a jacket, although I wouldn’t say it’s as warm as Los Angeles. Like Los Angeles the sky is glowing orange (it’s always orange in England) and you’d get damp if you where outside. In England, however, there are dead people burried everywhere, so you don’t want to go wandering around at night, whereas in Los Angeles we would walk to the park and swing on the swingsets, and talk about something or other. We might also try to get into the basement of the math buidling, but that’s only if we’re genuine adventerous. Jeesh, I love those blamed swing sets under the palm trees and the Los Angeles star (you can only see one).

The fog we have in Oregon is thick and dense, and you can’t see through it to save your life or drive your car. It’s proper fog.

 

Fashion Capital: Milan

Did I ever tell you this?  Milan is, or at least is supposed to be they tell me, the fashion capital of the world.  Because they recognize this as true, Nike has a shop there.  All the people from all over thhe world go to Milan to buy their fashion, and when they go they go to thei Nike store.  This ends up really funny, of course, because they go to the Nike store and buy a sweatshirt that says “Oregon” on it.  This is because the all famous Phil Knight, coach of the amazing Steve Prefontaine, invented and began Nike, so they sell “Oregon” shirts (because he was the U of O coach, and U of O is sometimes called “Oregon”, as opposed to “Oregon State”, which is OSU).  If you go to Milan, you’ll see a lot of “Oregon” sweatshirts, and it’ll make you feel at home.

 

Los Angeles

It’s interesting how, after living somewhere where some of the people come from London and other people come from Ipswick and Elstree and Heathfield places like Los Angeles, Santa Cruz, and Santa Barbara sound forign.  It helps, of course, that they’re all Spanish-y, but doesn’t Chicago begin to sound far away, too (of course, it always did).  Isn’t it amazing that at this time, last year, I was leaving to live in Connecticut for a couple of months?  And doesn’t Oregon sound far away and let’s face it, mythic?

Yeah, I thought so too.

 

Self-Interest

I’m in any movie or photo-project Devin will let me be in.  This is because I a.  like faffing about and spending time helping people with work that is not my own and b.  am very interested in myself in media.  This is just true.  Representation of ones self is, pretty much inherently, I should think, interesting.  Through this interest in self-representation I earned a somewhat undeserved reputation for intense narcicism.  However, it was my awareness of this reputation that allows me to have endevours like facebook and the weblog, which are clearly self-made monuments to my own identity, but if it’s already universally acknowledged that I’m darned narcicistic, fine, then, I’m willing to be induldged.

What I am not is arrogant.  I have a very realistic preception of myself, my value, and my abilities.  If I sometimes choose to over-represent my value or abilities, it is not inaccurate (which I initially spelled as “aqurate”), it is merely missing the ending line “as are all people”.  As in “I’m awesome, as are all people”.  Sometimes I might be sarcastic, too, and this sounds arrogant, as in “and I’m bound to revolutionize literary theory”; this is a joke, because I probably won’t, mut more because I feel like a lot of people could, if they put their mind to it, because that’s how literary theory is.

 

Narcicism

Narcisis fell in love with his reflection in a pool of water.  That’s the origins of the word.  That’s one of those words everyone loves to tell you the origins of.

This is the story of Echo and Narcissus (I didn’t write it):

Echo was a beautiful nymph, fond of the woods and hills, where
she devoted herself to woodland sports. She was a favorite of
Diana, and attended her in the chase. But Echo had one failing;
she was fond of talking, and whether in chat or argument would
have the last word. One day Juno was seeking her husband, who,
she had reason to fear, was amusing himself among the nymphs.
Echo by her talk contrived to detain the goddess till the nymphs
made their escape. When Juno discovered it, she passed sentence
upon Echo in these words: “You shall forfeit the use of that
tongue with which you have cheated me, except for that one
purpose you are so fond of REPLY. You shall still have the
last word, but no power to speak first.”

This nymph saw Narcissus, a beautiful youth, as he pursued the
chase upon the mountains. She loved him, and followed his
footsteps. Oh, how she longed to address him in the softest
accents, and win him to converse, but it was not in her power.
She waited with impatience for him to speak first, and had her
answer ready. One day the youth, being separated from his
companions, shouted aloud, “Who’s here?” Echo replied, “Here.”
Narcissus looked around, but seeing no one, called out, “Come.”
Echo answered, “Come.” As no one came, Narcissus called again,
“Why do you shun me?” Echo asked the same question. “Let us
join one another,” said the youth. The maid answered with all
her heart in the same words, and hastened to the spot, ready to
throw her arms about his neck. He started back, exclaiming,
“Hands off! I would rather die than you should have me.” “Have
me,” said she; but it was all in vain. He left her, and she went
to hide her blushes in the recesses of the woods. From that time
forth she lived in caves and among mountain cliffs. Her form
faded with grief, till at last all her flesh shrank away. Her
bones were changed into rocks, and there was nothing left of her
but her voice. With that she is still ready to reply to any one
who calls her, and keeps up her old habit of having the last
word.

Narcissus was cruel not in this case alone. He shunned all the
rest of the nymphs as he had done poor Echo. One day a maiden,
who had in vain endeavored to attract him, uttered a prayer that
he might some time or other feel what it was to love and meet no
return of affection. The avenging goddess heard and granted the
prayer.

There was a clear fountain, with water like silver, to which the
shepherds never drove their flocks. Nor did the mountain goats
resort to it, nor any of the beasts of the forest; neither was it
defaced with fallen leaves or branches; but the grass grew fresh
around it, and the rocks sheltered it from the sun. Hither came
one day the youth fatigued with hunting, heated and thirsty. He
stooped down to drink, and saw his own image in the water; he
thought it was some beautiful water=spirit living in the
fountain. He stood gazing with admiration at those bright eyes,
those locks curled like the locks of Bacchus or Apollo, the
rounded cheeks, the ivory neck, the parted lips, and the glow of
health and exercise over all. He fell in love with himself. He
brought his lips near to take a kiss; he plunged his arms in to
embrace the beloved object. It fled at the touch, but returned
again after a moment and renewed the fascination. He could not
tear himself away; he lost all thought of food or rest, while he
hovered over the brink of the fountain gazing upon his own image.
He talked with the supposed spirit: “Why, beautiful being, do you
shun me? Surely my face is not one to repel you. The nymphs
love me, and you yourself look not indifferent upon me. When I
stretch forth my arms you do the same; and you smile upon me and
answer my beckonings with the like.” His tears fell into the
water and disturbed the image. As he saw it depart, he
exclaimed, “Stay, I entreat you! Let me at least gaze upon you,
if I may not touch you.” With this, and much more of the same
kind, he cherished the flame that consumed him, so that by
degrees he lost his color, his vigor, and the beauty which
formerly had so charmed the nymph Echo. She kept near him,
however, and when he exclaimed, “Alas! Alas!” she answered him
with the same words. He pined away and died; and when his shade
passed the Stygian river, it leaned over the boat to catch a look
of itself in the waters. The nymphs mourned for him, especially
the water-nymphs; and when they smote their breasts, Echo smote
hers also. They prepared a funeral pile, and would have burned
the body, but it was nowhere to be found; but in its place a
flower, purple within, and surrounded with white leaves, which
bears the name and preserves the memory of Narcissus.

 

Fellows Garden

Jesus College has invested in a number of peices of art work with a sanction put on them that says that they cannot be maintained and rather must be allowed to deteriorate.  This is a bad investment; art which may be maintained will last a lot longer.

 

Two weeks.

I go home in exactly two weeks, which is funny, in a way.  I came to England and it gave me lots of other possibilities.  Rather than clarifying vision, it gave me lots of other possiblities of what to do when and where.  It shouldn’t really have done that, because what it should have clarified is that I should never go from home, but I believe what I’m forced to conclude is that home is far more diverse and specific than I had previously imagined.   I have brought no conclusion from England.

I go home in two weeks.  I go home in two weeks.  In two weeks from this actual minute I should be boarding a plane to go home and will not see anyone here for a very long time.  In slightly more than two weeks from this actual minute I will be at the home which I haven’t seen in a very long time.  Two weeks is not very long at all.

A lot of the people you see in graduation photos you will never see again.  This is true.  A lot of the people you leave you will never return to, nor will they return to you, because this is how life goes.  It’s not even something you have to accept.  It’s not even really something you will think about, because if you never return to them or they never return to you, then it only matters so much anyway, because if it had mattered more, you’d have returned to them.  This isn’t pop-philosophy and it also isn’t sad.  It’s encouraging.  Because some people you do return to and some people will visit you.  I always return to Oregon and to the people there, and sometimes they visit me.  You don’t have to worry, because the things that need to be maintained will be so.

It is very easy to return or to visit, but you have to decide to do so.  At some point, you’ll have to buy the airline ticket to go to Oregon, or else you’ll never get there.  This is why some people will be lost after graduation, because they think they’d like to visit, and they think to visit a lot, but they never buy the airline ticket.  This is what worries us about graduation and westside girls, and life.   I say this is what worries us, but I’m not all that worried.

 

The Artist

The point at hand is what constitutes art and who is the artist.  This is an interesting question.  This is what Wilde says:

The artist is the creator of beautiful things. To reveal art and conceal the artist is art’s aim. The critic is he who can translate into another manner or a new material his impression of beautiful things.

The highest as the lowest form of criticism is a mode of autobiography. Those who find ugly meanings in beautiful things are corrupt without being charming. This is a fault.

Those who find beautiful meanings in beautiful things are the cultivated. For these there is hope. They are the elect to whom beautiful things mean only beauty.

There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written. That is all.

The nineteenth century dislike of realism is the rage of Caliban seeing his own face in a glass.

The nineteenth century dislike of romanticism is the rage of Caliban not seeing his own face in a glass. The moral life of man forms part of the subject-matter of the artist, but the morality of art consists in the perfect use of an imperfect medium.

No artist desires to prove anything. Even things that are true can be proved. No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style. No artist is ever morbid. The artist can express everything.

Thought and language are to the artist instruments of an art. Vice and virtue are to the artist materials for an art. From the point of view of form, the type of all the arts is the art of the musician. From the point of view of feeling, the actor’s craft is the type. All art is at once surface and symbol. Those who go beneath the surface do so at their peril.

Those who read the symbol do so at their peril. It is the spectator, and not life, that art really mirrors. Diversity of opinion about a work of art shows that the work is new, complex, and vital. When critics disagree, the artist is in accord with himself. We can forgive a man for making a useful thing as long as he does not admire it. The only excuse for making a useless thing is that one admires it intensely.

All art is quite useless.

 

Tired

The entire town is tired, and sort of hanging by a thread, which is tricky.  Everyone’s worked ridiculously hard in the last three weeks, and it’s making everyone dull and it’s getting difficult to be witty.  We could tell you a lot about our subjects at this point, and a lot of what we’d tell you would be interesting as heck, or we could be silly or ridiculous or cute, but it’s gotten to a phase where we’re out-of-our-skulls-exhausted, and are ready to be done, and are just not clever.  It’s a shame, too, because I’m sure we’re usually all quite clever people.

So it goes.  In a few days everyone will be done.  Everyone will be rested.  Everyone will be ready-and-raring to be alive, and we’ll be clever instead of beligerant.  It’ll be darned good.  Until then we’re just so so tired.

 

Also about Oregon

http://www.blacktable.com/schuman040414.htm

 

On the two most recent chapters…

Obviously I don’t agree with everything the two previous chapters say about Oregon (we’re unable to shake that damn marajuana association, no matter how zarking sub-free we are). However, I feel like the hard-core spirit of the state comes through in both, and this is what’s important.

Also, and this is key, Oregon is really only interesting if you’ve left.  If you’re still there, you’ll probably think that that’s just how the world is, and it’s not funny, it’s normal.  This is true.

 

States

Freshman year we all looked up “you know you’re from XYZ when” facts about our states.  These are the facts for Oregon.  I consider them to be mostly true:

You feel guilty throwing aluminum cans in the trash.

You know more than 10 ways to order coffee.

You know more people who own boats than air conditioners.

You stand on a deserted corner in the rain waiting for the “Walk” signal.

You consider that if it has no snow or has not recently erupted, it is not a real mountain.

You know how to pronounce Sequim, Puyallup, Issaquah, Oregon, Yakima, and Willamette.

You are not fazed by “Today’s forecast: showers followed by rain,” and “Tomorrow’s forecast: rain followed by showers.”

You know that Boring is a town in Oregon and not just a state of mind.

You switch to your sandals when it gets about 60, but keep the socks on.

You think people who use umbrellas are either wimps or people from California.

You buy new sunglasses every year, because you cannot find the old ones after such a long time.

You measure distance in hours.

You own more than 10 articles of clothing that have microbreweries and/or brewpubs printed on them. Bonus for embroidered stuff.

You live equidistant to a symphony hall, a winery, and a volcano.

You complain about Californians as you sell your house to one for twice as much as you originally paid.

You know a bride and groom that registered at REI.

If someone ran your car off the highway, you might drown.

Know at least eight people who work for Intel or Nike, or used to work for Tektronix.

You obey all traffic laws except “keep right unless passing.”

You think downtown is “scary” because you were panhandled there….once.

You’ve definitley used the five main freeways/highways: I-5, 217, 205, 26, and 84.

You know that Kindergarten Cop and The Goonies were filmed in Astoria and Cannon Beach, respectively.

You take pride in Lewis and Clark and know who Sacagawea is.

You were excited when the Crater lake, Oregon quarter came out.

You love The Shins… because they live here.

You love the Decemberists…. because they are from here…and live here.

You dress in layers (tank top, t-shirt, long sleeve shirt, sweatshirt, jacket, etc).

You remember Ramblin’ Rod –and you laugh because you used to watch it or because you were on it for your birthday.

You are sad during Christmas because it never snows in the valley.

You know where the valley is.

You go out of state and wait in your car for someone to pump your gas.

You are more concerned about packing a sweatshirt or a jacket when going to the beach than packing a bathing suit.

You are aware that “The Shining” was filmed at Timberline Lodge.

The red nose on the ‘made in oregon sign’ starts your holiday season

You’ve seen the elvis impersonator at saturday market

You smile at people you don’t know as you walk by them on the sidewalk.

You make subtle remarks about washington drivers, but save your real road rage for california drivers.

You’ve witnessed 300 nude bicyclists just cruising around downtown like its no big deal.

You were thrilled that Scott Thomason finally stop putting his face on the back of his cars.

You should know it is illegal to buy or sell marijuana, but it is legal to smoke it on your own property.

 

College

Me:  Eh, college makes you bitter.

My Sister: I’m already bitter.

Me:  It makes you more bitter.

My Sister:  I don’t think I could stand it.

 

Tea

Maddie will tell you that I can’t say “no”; nope, I can’t say “no” at all.  It means I’ll never say I’m too busy to have tea, mostly because I like to see people and chat, and I will always do my work and I will always do it with quality, so there’s no need that it be done now, as such.  I’ll just stay up later.  This has never caused me any problems, except that sometimes I’ve had to much tea (and thereby caffine, which makes me feel ill if I have too much).

 

Ely Cathedral

Once Fred, Edan, and I went to see a cathedral for architecture class.  This is true.

The doscent was old, and very enamored with the cathedral, so much so that he even loved the statue of the Maria in the Lady’s Chapel (that’s right, because it refers to only one lady, and that being Mary), which is saying quite a bit, because this was not a good statue.  He took us around and we saw many things, most of which are old, and took many pictures, most of which are useless, because they’re of very pretty things, which, in a cathedral, take on the universality of the old and grand that can only be broken down by a counissour like the doscent, and otherwise mean very little beyond that we all saw something old and grand.

Architecture was a funny class, because the three of us where in it, and we all used to live in Harwood our freshmen year, and be real solid type friends.  So it goes.  We’re done with that now.

 

The East Coast

One of the most profound challenges of giving up the major in biology in favor of the English major was the framework of quiting to do someththing easier.  This is true.  Literature is easier than biology, and this is because I am decently skilled at it.  I write very quickly, and have writen a good 30 pages in a day before, and can usually come up with well-researched, well-read insight on very little apperant effort.  So it’s quiting, yes, but it’s quiting doing something I’m not really skilled at, in favor of doing something that I have profound skill in at a higher quality.  It’s okay.  It also didn’t mean I worked any less hard, it just mean’t that the work I did went towards real insights, rather than mastering material already mastered by countless students, let alone pioneering anything.

The funny thing about living in the east coast last summer was that they assumed we weren’t smart.  All the kids there with Californian accents got ridiculous run-around.  We where talked-down at like no body’s business; the degree to which the presumption is that, in the west coast, people are slow, don’t work, and may or may not be slightly affected is ridiculous.

One of the reasons I applied to Pomona early admission was because the name was modest.  You can’t say “I went to Harvard” without boasting.  It’s just a fact; there are airs present in the word “Harvard” that are not present in other words.  You can say it as lowly as you like, you can say “I went to Harvard on pure luck”, or “I went to Harvard, but I studied dance”, and regardless it’s bragging.  One of the good things about Pomona, before we even went there, was when people said “where are you going to school?” you could answer and they’d look at you quisically and ask “where’s that?”.  It never had to be said as an apology.  It’s fine, too, because Pomona has the best undergraduate acceptance rate to graduate schools of any liberal arts school in the country; people who should know what Pomona is and how we work there know.

So we resent the damn East Coast for thinking we’re silly, and we’re sorry we framed for ourselves the preception that science is more work.  We’re darned smart, and even if we’re not, we work hard enough to over come any latent silliness the East Coast might have been right about.

 

Caffine

Caffine improves my focus phenominally.  It also makes me jittery very quickly.  Tea, Mintu, tea.