Also, I found something that supports my "controversial statement" in my last post.
"A good reader percieves the poem structurally, resulting in good criticism... A poor reader, on the other hand, simply expressses his or her personal emotions and reactions to a text. Such a reader is untrained in literary technique and craftsmanship. A poor reader and poor criticism, for example, may argue that a poem can mean anything its reader or its author wishes it to mean. On the other hand, a good critic and good criticism will assert that only through a detailed structural analysis of a poem can the correct interpretation arise" (57-58).
From Bressler's Literary Criticism. Woohoo, New Criticism! I'm a New Critic! English! English major! Woohoo!
So you think you can solve all your problems by yourself? Well nevermind nevermind nevermind nevermind nevermind.
Rémy Peyroux is warming up a little bit to our class. Last Friday he asked us all if we had "fait une fête" the previous night, and then proceeded to tell us he was hungover. I took this as a sign of impending friendship. Tomorrow there is a mid-afternoon gathering called "Cafe Francais" in the lobby of Herter, and its purpose is for French students to drink coffee and speak French to peers. I am going to test my speaking skills, although I am très nerveuse to speak with native speakers like Rémy.
My English professor is super intimidating. Every time I speak in class he shoots whatever I say down. He does it to everybody. I kinda like it though. I'm sick of teachers who accept everything anyone blurts out as "one interpretation." Sometimes there's only one way to look at it, even in English. I'm aware of the controversy of that last statement but I'm leaving it. Kirby Farrell (my professor) is also incredibly smart. Today I mostly didn't say anything in class for fear of being made to sound ignorant. At the end of the class he remarked that "Phoebe didn't show up today." I yelled "I'm right here!" because seriously, I was a couple of feet in front of his face. He laughed and said he didn't recognize me because I changed my hair (straightened). Why is it that people notice my hair before my face? Last year Dan saw me with my hair wrapped in a towel and looked right past me like I was a stranger. It was surreal. Anyways, then Kirby gave me back my first paper. He had written "A" on the top, in combination with a couple other very nice things. I felt so great suddenly. I had apparently impressed this man who had scared me into silence for the previous fifty minutes. I can't decide if undeserved good grades or undeserved bad grades are worse, but I thought I earned this one and I walked home humming Camera Obscura and forgetting for a blissful while my petty occupations with people and relationships and desires.
Liz just texted me saying "GAY SEX MY FLOOR ELEVATOR LOBBY." Naturally, I bolted out of my room and down the stairs. Two guys were cuddling in the corner next to the elevator. I didn't slow my pace though, I ran right to Liz's room, and we danced maniacally in the hallways before I ran away and up the stairs again.
you're such a beautiful writer that's not all you are i'm sorry about making a pass it was subtle but i think that you guess the meaning intended
My cats are so awesome. They get in really weird moods and have to rub their bodies all over your legs and jump on you and sink their claws in so that they can hold on. They also can't meow like normal cats do - maybe this disability is a product of their age - but it sounds like a meow infused with a frog noise infused with a chain smoker noise. I like it. I am at home now for the first time since summer (okay that was only two weeks ago), and as usual, it feels weird. I am totally alone, literally. Whenever I come home from college and all my friends are in their own little worlds, probably drunk, and completely inaccessible, I feel the need to drive my car at night and listen to the National and try to be as sad as possible. Right before writing this post I went to the YMCA to use the elliptical for twenty minutes because really, what else could I do that would make me sadder. As I was driving there I felt like the darkness over what is supposedly the busiest street in Holden was eating me alive.
It's only when I take a step back and look at my life from an hour and a half away from it do I realize how dark it is in there. I know I need to wake up but it's like waking up isn't even the hard part, it's the wanting to.
I just drew five little pink animals and it's my new trademark. Also, nothing is more disappointing than being rejected by a job. Except about a million other things.
Today I woke up and Olivia and I helped each other pick out outfits. Then we went to the dining hall and I ate oatmeal. I am recently fascinated by oatmeal.
I found it hard to concentrate in French class because my teacher wore skinny jeans today. Also, I've already learned everything we're doing. This is good and bad for me: bad for obvious reasons, and good because language is really easy to forget if you go a year without any practice at all like I did last year. After French I had to watch a movie for English in the library. It was called "The Evolution of the Chicken" and I honestly have no idea why we were assigned to watch it. It was weird as shit. Then in English class, I realized my teacher is awesome. Definitely the best English teacher I've had here, possibly just the best teacher. Also when I was taking off my sweatshirt, I accidentally made a sort-of-groping motion on the boy sitting behind me. You know, like a sweeping of my hands across his legs. I apologized and he said, "That's okay I kinda liked it."
I'm so excited because it's the weekend! It's hard to get back in the swing of blogging.
1. Yesterday two freshmen asked me for directions and since then I've felt (falsely) like I possess an air of self-confidence and direction only achieved by knowing your way around places. 2. A girl just came into my room to tell me she loved the Cut Copy song I was listening to. Which is kinda funny since it's the first time I've listened to this song. But anyways that's sort of something I would do to someone I didn't know. I can feel the members of this dorm sort of soften up and start to be friends with each other. 3. My french professor's name is Rémy Peyroux. His name reminds me of a skunk or other small furry animal (pepé le pew perhaps?). I looked him up on facebook and his profile picture is of his red shoes. He is also very cute, and did I mention French? 4. I haven't been unhappy even once since I moved back to college.
It’s strange that after a summer-long hiatus from blogging, I chose today to restart. I am writing from the Omega Institute in Rhineback, New York, where I am taking a week-long workshop in insight meditation and mindfulness yoga. If this doesn’t sound like something I’d normally do, it’s because it’s not something I’d normally do, it’s something my dad would do. He’s the meditation guru of the family. My experience meditating is mostly limited to nights where it takes me more than two hours to fall asleep and counting sheep has already failed me. That said, this is a great experience. I love being here; it’s so beautiful and not boring at all. I’m learning a lot about myself, not the least of which includes that I can’t meditate successfully for more than five breath cycles, but hey, doesn’t that make me all the more likely candidate for learning how to meditate? That’s what I’m telling myself. Anyways, I’m going to tell the story that I came here to.
I am the youngest person in my meditation class by about eight years (I am not so good at age-guessing). The next people up are a couple whom I imagine to be about twenty-eight. The woman has a short, stylish blonde haircut and presents herself with an air of self-confidence that teeters over the border of arrogance. She looks, to me, a couple of years older than her partner, but he has what you would call a “baby face” so maybe she’s not. The couple are intimate in a way that makes me feel nervously uncomfortable – back-rubbing, hugging for extended periods of time in a room full of people, seductive glances; I often feel like a creep just for looking at them sit next to each other. Last night, as I walked from the bathroom back to my cabin in the dark, I heard a shriek coming from the woods. Before having any idea who it was coming from I knew exactly who it was coming from. I pushed the thought out of my mind and entered my cabin alone, lay on the bed and tried reading. But I heard noises. A faint whimpering permeated the walls, and at about the same rate at which the whimpering grew in volume and frequency, the steady thump of body weight against a bed began to crescendo. I felt a simultaneous surge of intrigue and panic. I ran outside the cabin to sort out what I was hearing, but the noises grew softer. This meant that they were coming from the wall opposite the door – the one directly behind my head. In shock, I pressed my ear against this wall and listened to my neighbors have sex – an act I neither wanted to be nor could resist doing. As I listened, two things struck me. One, I guess I have never actually overheard the act of coitus in real life, only in the movies. I know this to be true because after last night, I know I never could have had this experience and subsequently forgot about it. Two, my dad was in the bathroom brushing his teeth and would no doubt be returning at any moment. This struck a chord in me. Oh Lord please let him take his time. Please do not force upon me the horror of sharing this moment with none other than my own father. I heard what was obviously the grand finish seconds before my dad opened the cabin door. I sat rigidly straight on the bed and returned his greeting of “Hey!” suspiciously loud. But there was nothing left to drown out. From then until I fell asleep that night, I was hyper-aware of every fleeting noise I heard from outside our cabin. A creak of a bedspring, a word spoken at low volume – everything I heard made me jump as if I were suddenly startled by an animal directly behind me, ready to prey. The next morning as I dragged my groggy and headachy body out of my cabin, I caught sight of our neighbors leaving their own. Sure enough it was the blonde woman and the baby-faced man, giggling as they walked, the woman’s bouncy curls undulating up and down like those of a sickeningly-sweet child actress. From my half-asleep state I watched them secretly like the true creep I was. Oh what they had put me through. My poor, innocent mind! While I felt grateful to have narrowly escaped what surely would have been the most awkward five minutes of my life – sharing my already-traumatic experience with my father – I knew entirely too much about this damn couple. My meditations were distracted today.
Right now I'm sitting cross-legged on my bed with a fan standing next to me like a child waiting to be noticed. I'm doing work for my internship at Baystate Parent magazine on my laptop. I'm not a journalist, but if I was, I'd be sitting in this exact same position. This internship is already teaching me so much and I've barely even started.
I sit on my bed at night, after everyone has gone to sleep, and go on the computer, or read. Lately I've been watching True Blood. But this night is different, for a lot of reasons. For one, I am getting work done. Also, I look different today. Just a little bit. After Liz dropped me off today, it only took the time from walking to her car to my house to formulate the decision to cut my hair. Not a lot, just a little. So I found scissors and went into the upstairs bathroom and chopped through select locks of my hair and they fell into the sink and separated. Then I gathered the hairs up in my hands and put them in the trashcan. The pile of hair looks like a little sleeping animal. My hair doesn't appear that different, but I know it is and I love it this way.
I am so equally divided in my feelings about how my life is at this exact moment. I don't like trying to sum up into words such broad feelings so I will let these events speak for them. Tonight I remembered that I have no way to get to work tomorrow because my mom won't let me drive the car without my license. I lost my license, and everything else in my wallet, at a Dom show in Worcester last Thursday night. Losing my wallet has caused me so much stress. I can't drive my car and I have no access to money. These two things combined make me feel incredibly dependent and very small. However, and I think this is metaphorical for my whole summer, I can't say that the show wasn't worth it anyways. It was so fun and lately fun with my friends has been so ridiculously freeing. It's like so much, including having no money and a future full of uncertainty, is just completely worth it. Today my group of friends unintentionally segregated into cars based on gender: four boys in one, four girls in the other. Before we could leave Calico & Cream and go back to the lake, Kathryn helped Parker attach his bike to the top of the car. I sat in the other and watched them through the window. I was loving the music that was playing and I couldn't help but feel like I was watching the whole scene as part of an audience. Why was the image of my friends, with their hair wet from swimming and their sun-tanned shoulders, attaching a bike to the roof of the car and then riding away, so poetic and beautiful to me? On the ride home I felt so in love with everything. I thought about how lucky I am to be able to appreciate this deeply when I simultaneously feel more fearful than I have in a very long time. I know it's the good kind of fear though; I know that for everything scary that's about to happen, there is something equally as exhilarating. Then Liz dropped me off, and I already told you what happened after that.
Well I didn't blog "tomorrow" but who was much surprised by that. I don't do this often but I am forcing myself to blog even though I am not particularly compelled to right now - merely because I am trying to force the habit. Yesterday was the most fun day I've had in a while. Liz came home from California and we sat on the rail trail to talk. It was so beautiful and nice to be outside. Spending more time outside would be my New Year's resolution if New Year's Day was tomorrow. Then we met up with Steve and went to my house. We went to the farmer's market in Holden to buy lettuce, fudge, and a tomato, and we cooked dinner. Then Kathryn came over and it was a little mini dinner party in honor of Liz's return. Later that night, Kelsey joined us and we drove around Worcester aimlessly and blasted five-year-old hip hop songs that we all know the words to but don't really remember how it got that way. The best kind of fun is the kind to which you can say "I don't even know why this is so fun."
What a transitional summer this is. I've had a lot of people tell me the summer between your freshman and sophomore year at college is supposed to be the worst/ weirdest. That makes sense, because I can't logically deduce which of the two worlds - here, and school - I really feel like I belong in more, even though I like both. This creates a feeling of restlessness and of homelessness. And also, I am constantly plagued by the pressure to be doing MORE MORE MORE, to be having the MOST amazing and life-changing summer, to be destined for the greatest things. Do you know what I mean? I don't think I felt this kind of pressure before I went to college. In two weeks I am "moving" to New York City for a month. I've never seen myself living in a city but the past couple of months has drawn me to it immensly. I see this as a trial run: if I like it, then I might be taking a look into my future, if I don't, then I need to go live in the woods and go cold turkey on shaving my legs. But I can also see things turning out in a way that I will always have a special place in my heart for both of those lifestyles.
Sorry this blog is mostly pointless, but now I'm on a roll. Yesterday I found my cell phone from last year and read my texts that are still saved. I used to hone a habit of deleting pointless texts and saving meaningful ones, so this phone is an amalgamation of the most heartfelt, emotional, and intense thoughts that broadly sum up my senior year and summer before college. It's so weird guys!! It made me wish that I had that kind of stuff saved from this year, and also worry that my life now is so poorly-documented compared to the way it was then. But my obsession with documenting (I blogged every day last year!) often pulls me away from the present. I am a bystander on the sidelines of my life, taking pictures so I be in touch with my current feelings forever. I am constantly concerned with how the present moment will look and feel to me in three months or a year. My other New Year's resolution is to know that it is okay for some things to belong only exactly when they occur, and not a year later when I find them stored in a dusty and broken phone on my shelf. To know it's okay to leave them behind.
This is what I am trying to accept as true: everything that I want to do is easier then I think it is, and none the less rewarding. I swear!
This morning I awoke at five thirty to screams from someone who sounded like they had either been shot or watched someone very close to them be shot. Turns out it was neither, it was my two year old cousin Esther, and after about an hour of screaming/ crying/ laughing/ running around, she appeared at my bedside giggling and hiding plastic horses under my legs. I don't know how I feel about children in general, but I like this one. Even though the way I woke up this morning was one of the most terrifying experiences of my life.
I'm in Florida right now and staying at a house with a back door fifty feet from the ocean. It's pretty cool. All there is to do is lay on the beach and read books and hang out with my family. This is an okay deal, especially because I would be doing equal or less activity if I were home right now. And I'm feeling so good about my summer finally! All of it, including the idle days I spent mulling around with Kelsey etc. and trying to find something to do that is at least as entertaining as following some weird girl from our middle school around in our car. Tonight I spend a long time getting really worked up for the Glee season finale, and somehow didn't feel as fulfilled by it as I had hoped. Maybe that's a life lesson to never ever expect to be fulfilled in any way by television. Anyways afterwards I went onto the deck and faced the ocean and I couldn't see it because it was night time but I obviously knew it was there. It was beautiful and it was pitch black. When it doubt, go outside. And I mean for that statement to solve bigger problems than being disillusioned by Glee.
My list of things to focus on so I can try to get excited to spend next week in my least favorite, hot-as-the-blazes state with my extended family:
1. Reading a lot of books 2. Getting a tan 3. Taking pictures 4. Going shopping 5. Listening to music as a metaphorical getaway from my relatives 6. Riding my bike on the beach and away from my relatives 7. Drinking a lot of beer and 8. Repeating 5 and 9. Repeating 6 10. Guilting my relatives into giving me beer
edit: I just found out that the nearest grocery store to where we're staying is ten miles away. So scratch 4.
