Nothing To Be Thankful For? Check Your Pulse

"You're too blessed to be depressed."

Thanks, random church sign on the road back to campus—I'll try to keep that in mind. Still, I wonder what the people who ask "How was your break?" without really caring about the answer would think if I told the truth and answered "Pretty shitty."


(And so ends National Blog Posting Month. Accomplishment!)

It's Beginning to Look a Lot Like Christmas

If we put a moratorium on tacky Christmas lights for five years, I bet we'd conserve enough energy to power actually useful stuff, like generators in New Orleans or water wells in Kenya.

C'mon, neighborhoods of the Midwest—forgo your blinking snowflake festoons. Save the planet and my eyes.

Consumer America

Black Friday crowds are terrifying.

Days like this make me lose all faith in the US—what material object could possibly be so important?

I Get My Back Into My Living

Fact: Radio DJs who talk in the middle of songs are hella annoying.

How am I supposed to perfect my air-drum entrance if some hot-shot named Dexter is promoting a sports bar meet-up or some such nonsense during the intro to "Baba O'Riley"?!

Potatoes, Green Beans, and Turkey (Oh My)

I didn't think I'd have to take on making most of the Thanksgiving meal so early in life—pity we can't just eat pumpkin pie and call it a night.

(The lobby of the hospital looks like that of a hotel, which belies the nightmares—and, I hope, the miracles—that go on two floors above it.)

Wiiings My Ass

I hate that Red Bull commercial with the animated college guy trying to study for his biochem exam and the girl who's distracting him by trying to get into his pants. Do you really want to be promoting making sweet love over getting an education? Because last time I checked, this nation was getting rapidly stupider.

Santa Claus Is Coming to Town (and Too Soon)

Really, CVS? Really?
It's bad enough that you're selling battery-operated dancing snowmen and yuletide-inspired gumdrops already, but I thought you'd at least put off piping in the Christmas music until after we'd all gotten sick of turkey leftovers.

Some Sort of Complex

"Despise" is a strong word... but still, I wish this didn't feel so true.

The Little Things

I forgot the bathroom switch flips sideways instead of top to bottom and that we have towel hooks instead of racks.

(The flannel sheets, though, are just as heavenly as I remembered them.)

Paul Klee

Has a last name that sounds like "glee," which is apparently what his paintings make me feel (particularly "Der Niesen").

But today I fell in love—truly madly deeply—with a Klimt.

La Maison Ou J'ai Grandi

I can't wait to be where the radiator hisses and the bed creaks and the windows are stubborn and the walls rattle with the sounds of chattering squirrels.

Forgive Me

I have nothing to say.

Of Shoes—and Ships—and Sealing Wax*

I haven't worn actual snow boots since elementary school—I braved icy paths with naught but my treadless Converse sneakers all last year, so detestable was the idea of tucking my pant legs into any cushioned warmth—but I feel strangely powerful clomping around with these new ones. My jeans bunch out at the top and they're a little wide around my shins, but at least (and with luck) I won't be sliding on my ass anywhere thanks to their Land's End super grip technology.

Ugg boots are still Public Enemy No. 1, though.

*Last two do not apply.

There Is No Frigate Like a Book

I find it strange that some people simply refuse to write in their books, as if the pages were sacred objects meant to be kept unmarked, clean of any human thought other than the writer's. I don't usually annotate novels I read outside of class, but most of my course readings and paperback textbooks have more asterisks than in a comic strip's swear words, more underlining than an emphatically written 18th-century love letter, and more scribbles in the margins than graffiti on a railroad bridge.

Having a conversation with the text, roughing it up and leaving your own imprint—that's the point, not shying away from it and demurring to question or concur.

Sometimes I select what to buy from a used bookstore simply by what a previous reader has added to the pages.
"To Mom, Love Joe, Christmas '85"
"Yes!!"
"Pardon the egg salad stains, but I'm in love."

I've Come to Realize

Sundays are never as productive as you claim they'll be when you decide to watch a movie at midnight on Saturday.

There's a signboard looming on the horizon, fading in and out of view thanks to the desert air of this hairpin-straight road I'm on, that seems to say "Face it: you're not cut out to be a writer of anything but scholarly analyses, so stop kidding yourself and pretending you can make it as a poet," and I'm just plodding along in its direction, knowing it's there but too scared of its truth to try to knock it down.

XY : XX

Boys, man. What the fuck.

Like sometimes they're stupid and you see them in the middle of the street at 11:30 at night being hand-cuffed for, like, racing cars and generally failing at survival of the fittest despite their best efforts in the gym to becoming literally that.

But sometimes they're adorable and wear their heart on their sleeve and write your roommate haiku and then drop by at odd times in the evening because they've "got twenty minutes to kill" so they figure they'd just "hang out" by talking to said roommate (and only said roommate) outside your door for like twenty minutes, making it impossible for you to concentrate on John Stuart Mill (who, incidentally, deserves props for not being an asshole on the subject of women's rights).

But most of the time they don't give me a second glance, which is disheartening but I mean, fuck, whatever, it saves me a lot of drama.

Still, though...
I'd like a boy to sit with on a picnic blanket, pointing out constellations and debating which Who song is the best teenage anthem and reading me beat poetry with the hip cat voice I can never get down right and trading lines from Monty Python skits and teaching me poker hands and licking chocolate fudge from my home-made brownies off his fingers and listening to the new Shins album for the first time together and making nerdy puns and doodling on our respective Converse sneakers and stroking my hair to remind me that everything will be all right.

And corn mazes. Since eighth grade I've fantasized about having my first kiss in a corn maze.
Ahem.

In other news, someone should hurry up and invent miniature windshield wipers for glasses à la that spell from Harry Potter so that I can stand in the rain at 1:30 in the morning and not have kaleidoscope vision when I come back inside.

Top Five 19th-Century Bibliophilic Sexual Euphemisms

...That I Came Up with in the Past Half-Hour (Excepting the One About the Great White Whale—Thank You, Captain Obvious)

1. Charles your Dickens
   
2. Wuther your Heights
3. Treasure your Island
4. Mansfield your Park
5. Mill on your Floss
   

City That Never Sleeps

Maybe because there's just such a contrast between gravel paths and sidewalks, silos and skyscrapers, cow herds and human mobs, the Amish and the street vendors, cornfields and Times Square, or because the element of unpredictability just isn't as thrillingly present here, I find myself thinking of Manhattan more than I ever thought I would. I miss climbing on the big rocks near my Central Park playground (incidentally, the Gates installation feels so long ago), walking around Lincoln Center like I own the place, falling asleep to the symphony of sirens and yells and honks, wondering how the subway drummer got his groove, running through the Museum of Natural History to find my favorite displays, biting into the delicious panini at Fiorello's, excitedly reading cast bios right before a Broadway overture begins, pretending I am as harried as everyone else, and, of course, trying to absorb the pulse of the people into my bloodstream, to record everything they say as they pass by me under the scaffolding or in the crosswalk, little snippets of their lives that I can secretly tuck away like a good writer should. Maybe the country/city divide boils down to this: would you rather bump into acquaintances or strangers every day?

I'm sure I'd be terrified if I were actually in the city more than twice a month, but I could definitely go for some window shopping and roasted peanuts right now.

Smells Like Teen Self-Doubt

I don't just have bad hair days.

I have "impossible hair, ghost complexion, pimpled face, please let me sleep, bulging stomach, dead eyes, feed me chocolate, runny nose, annoying hangnail, fuck off, achy limbs, ill-fitting bra, stubbly legs, seriously just fuck off, dry skin, spouting cynicism, I need a child so that I'll have some semblance of love even though she'll start to resent me as soon as I tell her she's adopted because no one ever thought I was attractive enough to have sex with me" days.

(They're rather unpleasant, and happen all too frequently.)

Poo-tee-weet

Thank goodness for meat lockers.

Happy birthday, Kurt.
(Did I ever tell you that I wrote you a poem? It's decent. I wish you were here.)

Wrapped Up in Books

In high school I once sat down in the aisle of our library's poetry section during a free period, opened a Sylvia Plath anthology, and read as my cheeks became steadily slick with tears.

I feel more at ease surrounded by pages than by people. The knowledge of so many who came before, the outpourings of men's souls, the covers sandwiching passion and pain and truth and lies, the words strung together like rain drops on a telephone wire. Just looking up at shelves upon shelves of sentences, of frustration and frenzy and last-minute edits and the phrase she refused to change because she felt in her bones it was the right one... it makes me so insignificant, and yet so in tune with the pulse of the world. So right.

As I was studying on my bed the other day I looked up to my bookshelf and Slaughterhouse-Five stared back at me, winking, and I couldn't resist pulling it down and flexing its paperback spine yet again. So it goes.

Cigarettes and Chocolate Milk

If I can trick myself into thinking you smoke, maybe I'll stop dreaming of being your girl.

The Last Words of Gerard Manley Hopkins

"I am so happy, I am so happy."

If only that sentiment came manifested before one's death.

Mr. Postman

Dear Footballers,
Please stop wiggling your hand around in your pants during class. It's gross. Jock itch won't go away if you keep scratching, and I'm pretty sure l'Hôpital's rule isn't the most tantalizing of centerfolds.
Sincerely,
The Girl Who Has to Sit Next to You in Calculus

Dear Small Selection of Teenage Girls,
Cut your goddamn fingernails. Claws aren't in the least bit attractive. And while we're on the subject—why the hell do you insist on coloring them black?
Sincerely,
The Girl Who Used to Bite Hers

Dear Rain Showers,
Thank you.
Sincerely,
The Girl Who Was Getting Sick of Sunshine

Dear Cappuccino Machine,
You might just be my new favorite thing.
Sincerely,
The Girl Who Is Tired of Hot Chocolate but Too Wimpy for Straight-Up Coffee

Dear Inverse Trigonometry,
You are decidedly not my favorite thing.
Sincerely,
The Girl Who Prefers Words to Numbers—Ad Infinitum

Dear Boy,
You're cute. I'm sorry I'm shy.
Sincerely,
Girl

Confession

People who smile incessantly unnerve me.

The Thing About High Standards

Is that once you set them, you feel duly obliged to keep them. (Hence my striving for A's all straight since '98.)

And so, Mr. President-Elect, we're counting on you. Make America prouder than it was last night, and I promise we won't be known as the generation who gave up.

Limerick for the Fourth

There once was a time called Tuesday
Which was quite often a blues day—
But we'll remember
'08 November
Because this is the big news day.

I am actually scared that Obama won't win. Or that he will shortly be assassinated. Or that he'll neglect his people's mandate and become the corporation-loving, planet-exploiting, war-bungling, crisis-ignoring, scandal-making politico we all believed he wasn't. Such is my paranoid mind.

Buck the trend, Barack. Please.

No Happy Couplet

If I had ever been in love, this sonnet wouldn't be so hard to write.

Sister Sneaker Sister Soul

My left shoe has a hole in the bottom.
I rather like it that way—until I get to the gravel.

What I Decided at One in the Morning

When I am pregnant I will sit outside in an Adirondack chair, showing my nascent earthly miracle the wonder of the night sky.

(What's cuter than a toddler dressed as a dragon for Halloween?
A toddler who happens to be Amish.)