I'm just saying...

Like most other college campuses, my school has an over abundance of random and inane clubs; knitting club, Irish step dancing club, chocolate lovers club, surf club, I like to scratch my butt club, etc. I love it. I truly love that people are able to make clubs and societies pertaining to whatever it is their hearts desire. All of these clubs are well attended, which shows it isn't just one person sitting around trying to get funded by the student government. I think it's cool that no matter how obscure your interest, there are probably ten other people who are just as interested in it as you. From time to time, however, there are a few interest groups that make me cringe, shake my head or at least ask, “Is that really such a good idea?”

Case in point: Anime club.

Let me begin by saying that I am a fan anime. I'm not saying I'll fall head-over-heels for a show or a movie just because it has people with giant eyes and animal ears, but I do have a couple shows and movies I enjoy. I respect anime (or Japanamation as I grew up knowing it) as a valid art form and find it generally entertaining and full of incite in many cases. There are also many aspects of the genre by which I am completely bewildered and disgusted but I'd say that's true of most other visual mediums. No, my issue is not with the fact that there is an anime club on campus but rather the general tone of said club.

It's a discomfort that's hard to pin-point. It's the same kind of discomfort I get when a person's first or only exposure to African American culture is through gangsta' rap. Similarly, it holds a subtle hint of racism when a person's only or first exposure to Japanese culture is through anime. It doesn't make your a racist if rap or anime is your first exposure to another culure but it does underscore the racial unawareness in your world. Everyone has to start somewhere, a problem arises, however, when that first introduction becomes an essentialization of a culture and the lens through which one understands said culture. Here, I feel the fandom of anime has a tone of fetish, another way of tiptoeing dangerously close to racism and often times crossing the line.

I'm not saying this club should disband, I'm just saying maybe liking anime shouldn't be your reason for learning Japanese or studying in Japan for a semester. I'd kind of like a class on anime to be taught here, either in the film or sociology departments, just to put a different, more culturally aware perspective on this phenomenon. I'd register for it, just as long as I wouldn't have to sit next to someone wearing wings and a pink wig in class and be expected to act like it's normal, 'cuz it's not.

It's the simple things in life- tres

Today was one of those wonderfully dank and damp days; very English. The sky was the kind of gray you can't even paint but you can feel. Perfect for taking a brooding stroll or staring at from inside with a hot cup of tea or a warm bowl of soup. I got to do all three of those things along with some oatmeal cookies to go with the tea. Another wonderful sensation on a day such as this it putting on clothes fresh from the dryer. Nothing feels quite so toasty and comfortable; it's like getting a hug from your clothes. What bothers me is that it's not the same with keeping clothes cold. Earlier this month, when it was still sweltering and gross, I tried the trick I learned from The Seven Year Itch and put my underwear in the ice box. The cold only lasted for a few moments before I was just hot again. It didn't last nearly as long as tea or soup. Especially not as long as fresh laundry. The warmth from the dryer stays with you longest; it reaches your soul. The cold from the fridge is just a tease. I think that's why I enjoy the cold more than heat: you can always put more clothes on but you can only take so many clothes off. Plus, being super cold outside makes coming inside that much more satisfying.

Yes, I'm a woman of simple pleasures. Of course, I'll be a whiny punk once the winter comes.

Rear Window

For reasons I don't understand, I absolutely love riding backwards in cars. I can remember, as very small child, kneeling on the back seat of my parents' car, looking out to the road behind us, seeing the oncoming headlights of cars and how they clashed with the street lights. When I started riding in friends' station wagons I was usually the one who had to sit in the back because I was smallest and the seat belt could fit me. Now, I find I'll look for an excuse to sit in the back of a hatch-back, even when there are no seat belts. It's not just in cars either. On trains, buses and ferries I'll find reasons to ride facing opposite of the direction I'm headed.

I think it's the sensation of moving backwards instead of forward that I like. It's a very different ride than everyone else in the vehicle has. The image of things getting farther is somehow way more aesthetically appealing to me than things getting closer. I guess it it's because I like to see where I've been more so than where I'm going. That can be read in one of two ways; either that I reminisce rather than move forward or that I like to reflect rather than speculate. It's probably more of the latter though, I must admit, I have been guilty of the first.

I'm not really sure where I'm going with all this. It's just an observation. Although, I may not know where I'm going simply because I'm facing the other way and I like it.

"What's a motto with you?"

The illustrious Tim Gunn of television’s Project Runway has a certain catch phrase that serves a sort of motto for the designers on the show as well as everyone at my school: Make it work.

Don’t have enough sequins to cover a model's boobs?
Make it work.
Need to write a 20 page paper in 24 hours?
Make it work.
Your meal plan only covers 14 meals per week yet you find yourself hungry a third time each day?
Make it work.
Ran out of all your toiletries? At the same time?
Make it work.

This phrase, really, can be applied to all realms of life but tends to work particularly well when applied to situations of high stress. When you have no idea what to do, this motto tells you exactly what to do in three simple words. For certain situations, however, I’ve created a new phrase: Make it happen.

Want some ice-cream?
Make it happen.
Need a sweater-like-item for the cold?
Make it happen.
Think you might look good with bangs?
Make it happen.
Wishing for a reason to dance?
Make it happen.

It seems like I so often forget that I have the power to make things happen. My hope is that with this new little catch phrase I can regain the sense of control I've lost in my life. I'd like to get some of that control back. I intend to Make It Happen.

Adventures in Fishsitting

While my friend is away this weekend, I've agreed to feed her beta fish in her absence. I actually volunteered for the job since it meant I'd be able to hang out in her slightly messy but soon to be super swanky room. She, by the way, has the most awesome, most comfortable, full-sized bed. I had spend a good part of the prior evening hanging out in her room, mostly lounging in her bed when I realized, as she cooed and chatted with her fish, Monet, no one would be around to feed him.

My impression of Monet has changed since our first meeting. I've come to realize he's quite a friendly, conscious and smart little fellow. He shows a curiosity and interest when people pass by his bowl. He responds to voices, especially the high-pitched baby talk of my friend when she addresses him. I tried to imitate this intonation when I fed him today but it just didn't work. I don't know why, but I find it difficult to talk to pets (and babies I guess) in cooing, baby-talk fashion. I inevitably end up talking to them as if they were people my own age. I greet them as I would normal people; “It's been real,” were I believe my parting words to Monet. He seemed, in a fishy way, confused by this.

Fish, I learned, are incredibly easy to talk to. They don't judge you or as questions; they just swim. In Monet's case, being the curious little dude that he is, he comes to the side of his bowl and watches me when I get particularly excited or passionate about something.

I knew that my friend, (his “Mom” as I started to refer to her while talking to him), often reads to him, so I thought it might be nice to keep up this routine. Unfortunately, all that I found strewn about were academic books; hardly bed-time material. Instead, I read him a hilarious, slightly less intellectually challenging, article on-line about pancake batter in a can. He seemed interested by the end, or maybe he was just intrigued because I was laughing so enthusiastically over the article. Who can say? He swam away as I closed out of the Internet but came racing back when I said, “Goodnight.” I think he understands that word. He also seems to respond to his own name. It seems like something that could be tested. Yes; before I get to attached to this guy I should start treating him like a scientific experiment. That'll be sure to stop any emotions from getting involved. After all, he's not my fish.

The sound and the fury

For some reason or other, I have a knack for making involuntary, interrupting noises in situations when one should otherwise be quiet. More than once I've inexplicably needed to sneeze when a professor is waiting for someone to raise their hand and comment or answer a question. My stomach has been known to grumble at similar moments. There's also the odd yawn or two that have definitely earned me a death glare from a rightfully frustrated prof. These sounds aren't always biological. Often, it might be a trip or the dropping of an object or a whole tray of food in the middle of the dinning hall, but who notices that?

I can recall two instances today where such involuntary sounds were produced by me. The first was in the movie theater. My friend and I thought we would be incredibly devious and go see a movie at 5pm on a weekday! Once we got over the fact that we were actually incredibly pathetic for thinking we were in any way B.A.s, we went to get dinner. Being that we needed packable foods we could sneak into the theater, I went for carrot sticks and celery. Bad move. There's nothing quite a deafening as the crunch of produce whole opening credits are rolling by. The second instance was, of course, in the library. When I got up from a long while of reading (a good half an hour!) my chair screeched outrageously loud and long as I stood to leave.
Cinema and library; the two places that have explicit signs asking for your quiet. I just need to find some places of worship and I'm set. Maybe a funeral for good measure.

Maybe I should just cut my ear off...

When my parents came to drop off the rest of my junk, my dad bought me sunflowers. Sunflowers are without a doubt one of my favorite kinds of flowers. I love that they have no scent, not because I don't like the scent of flowers, but because it just seems very defiant of them. I love big and hefty they are; their stems are like branches!
Sadly, the sunflowers are beginning to wilt. I can't help but think that if I had just been a little more attentive to them, if I had given them more water, sooner, they would be a bit healthier. Granted, these flowers are over a week old, but I still wish they could last a bit longer. All in all, it's a bit depressing.

"Hot potato, hot potato!"

While there are numerous events pointing to the possibility that I am part old man and part teenage boy, I believe there's another part of me that is a six year-old child. The gender of this child doesn't matter much. Though, if I had to guess I'd say that, like my other alter egos, it's male.
In my fridge right now there are several packets of Mott's Apple Sauce. On my shelf I have Kix cerial (kid tested and mother approved) and GoDieogGo fruit snacks. On my desk I have a McDonnalds toy version of the Batmobile as well as a matchbox car I found as a prize in a box of Cheerios. There is a small wooden giraffe that smiles at me while holding random notes I need to remember. By my window sill there perches a battery operated talking parrot as well as a plushie of Robin of Loxley, the animated fox version of Robin. On my wall there proudly stands a Transformers poster (hanging directly above my desk as a source of inspiration) as well as a giant paper clip which is just begging to be attached to giant paper (which I also have); that's going to happen soon.
Did I forget to mention that I collect buttons? I suppose button collecting can be an old-woman thing as well as a little kid thing. As supported by the above evidence, however, I'm going to go with child for now.
Who knows? Maybe one day I'll manage to be one age and gender at the same time but I don't see that happening any time soon. But where's the fun in that? Besides, all my alter egos need other egos to keep them company. It's possible some others will crop up as the semester unfolds.

A little conceptual physics never hurt anyone... right away.

Recently, a friend of mine stated that she enjoyed the way I and my plutanic life mate occupy the same mental space.

I feel this statement reqires a couple of definitions.

Plutanic Life Mate: (a phrase of my own creation) A non-familial friend with whom you will spend most of your life in close proximity but for whom you feel zero physical attraction toward. You may find yourself reffering to this person as your sibling of cousin in conversations to simplify explinations of your relationship.

Same Mental Space: (a phrase created by my friend who made the above statement) An identical working between two or more minds. This similarity occupys a “space” of inexplicable comprehension. Similar to this are overlapping mental spaces and neighboring mental spaces.

I had never put our relationship put this way but in all truth it is the best summation of our interactions and responses to each other. He truly is my “brother from another mother”. Ever since this phrase has entered my frame of reference I’ve been applying it whenever I can, seeing moods and conversations as venerable ven diagrams of mental spaces shifting their coordinates on a plane. That sounds a bit like Flatland, but as abstract as that may seem it actually takes away the two most troublesome dimensions of spacetime.

Revenge is a dish best served. Period.

As it happens, I am a huge James Dean fan. I'm not sure when this love started but it was well before I had seen any of his movies. It was more the icon of James Dean and all that he stood for more so than the actor that I was enamored with. Now that I've seen all three of his films, it's both. Two years ago, based on this love, my friends thought it would be a great idea to get me a birthday present that had something to do with James. The opted for a life-sized cardboard cut-out. Imagine my surprise when I saw this massive thing was my gift. Apparently they didn't have as big an imagination because they saw the need to scare the ever-livin' out of me in the process of giving it to me.
Somewhat elaborately, they were able to coax me away from my room once I had unlocked it that evening. While I was somewhere else, half of them assembled it and lay the cut-out on its side on my bed. Initially, when I came back into my room I didn't see it; all the lights were out and my friend had left all of her crap on the floor, so I was mostly focused on getting her to get her junk out. I noticed that all of my friends were huddled around the entrance, staring at me expectantly. One of them turned the lights on and I got the hint that there was something behind me. Slowly turning around, I saw the figure of a human and nearly shat my pants. I screamed and fell to the floor amid their hysterical laughter. It was one of the greatest birthdays I can remember.
Yesterday, my parents brought the rest of my stuff from home that didn't fit into the car last week. Among that stuff was my James Dean cut-out. Once I had it assembled, the spirit spoke to me and gave me divine inspiration. My life-sized cut-out in hand, I creped down the hall to my friend's room. Her room is conveniently shaped like an “L”, with her bed situated around the corner such that she can't see anyone who enters her room if she's on her bed. As if preordained, this happened to be the case. Slowly, I moved the cardboard cut-out around the corner, as if James Dean were peaking. She flipped. There was a gasp and a scream. I don't really know what she looked like because I was around the other side of the corner but I can only imagine the look of horror on her face. “That's how I felt!” I yelled. “Yeah, but he wasn't moving!” she countered.
What can I say? I'm an instrument of God.

* This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle...

My day won't start properly until I've visited my favorite toilet stall. This is true for biological reasons as well as emotional ones. I have a favorite toilet stall in almost every bathroom on this campus. I think I like those stalls more than the individual bathrooms that are completely private; just the one room with a sink and a toilet feels strange to me. Maybe it's because those stalls are usually meant to be wheelchair accessible (but never actually are) and seem cavernous.
My favorite bathroom on campus is actually on the first floor of the library. Besides containing some wonderful and insightful conversation on it's walls (which thankfully was not painted this past summer) in the corner stall there is a fun project of filling all the lines of grout between the tiles with words and phrases pertaining to the word “line”. Crammed into these little spaces is everything from “Sweet Caroline” to “Walk the Line” to “incline”. The other stall actually gave me one of the best bits of wisdom I've ever received: Lovers can't be perfect but love can be.

*William Shakespeare, "King Richard II", Act 2 scene 1

We find our hero near Camelot...

Yesterday I learned (confirmed rather) that I have the aesthetic of an old man. This was revealed at the first meeting of my Legends of Arthur class. First, let me say I was really worried this would be a class filled with high level nerds, the geekdom of which I would never dare to challenge or reach. Thus, it had the potential to be really wonderful or extremely awful. Little did I know, I would end up looking (possibly being) the biggest dweeb there.
After passing around the syllabus and taking attendance, the professor (a monumentally cool Canadian woman) asked us all what we could remember as our first exposure to the Arthurian myths and legends. A few different sources were mentioned. When she called on me, I told her that my first exposure to the legend was through Prince Valiant in the Sunday comics. “Thank you for reminding me of Prince Valiant!” she exclaimed. Apparently, in all her years of teaching the course, no one had ever mentioned Prince Valiant before. (Here's where I become an old man): Prince Valiant is how her father was exposed to the legends as a child growing up in the 1930's.
Maybe I should just buy a sweater vest and call it a day.

Simon Says

I'm a little amazed at how quickly I'm able to mimic people's behavior and vocal inflections. In certain academic circles this is called “code switching”. I've done this most of my life. Since Kindergarden, I've been going from a fairly working class neighborhood where I live to an extremely affluent one for school, then back again in the evening. In each place I behaved some what differently.
In the Disney movies The Jungle Book and Tarzan there are scenes of Mowgli and Tarzan learning to speak like an animals and humans, respectively. That's how I feel. I never really took note of it until last year when I did it again for a field work assignment in which I traveled from school, in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods in the nation, to my field placement, to one of the poorest in West Philly. It made me extremely aware that I severely compartmentalized my life in order to maintain my mimicry. Keeping things separated made it easier to identify their key characteristics and embody them. In high school, I never had friends from school over to my house, not because I was ashamed of where I lived or how my family was but because I wasn't sure how I was supposed to behave. Was it a school or a home moment?
I'm glad to say, I'm much more confident with myself now. I know how to behave and when and it isn't usually based on mimicry. I'm able to be myself (now that I know what that is) and decompartmentalize the different spheres of my life and alow people into all of it. I do still, however, tend to speak the way the people around me speak. This includes accents and turns of phrase. While I was abroad, I definitely caught myself using an English accent once or twice. Now, I sound a lot like a friend I've been spending a lot of time with. I guess old habits die hard.

Welcome Back

Ahh! I'm finally moved into my room at school. I arrived two days ago but everything was such a mess, “I couldn't really call it “moved in” until this morning when I woke up and realized that a) I knew where everything was and b) the walls were put up.
I must say, even though this room was my last choice, it really is quite lovely. With the exception of the massive globular stain on the floor (the story behind which I learned yesterday), I love everything about it. It's bigger than I thought it would be and the view rivals one of Eden. The first night I was here a hawk perched about seven feet from my window! I was staring at it for about fifteen minutes before it flew away, majestically.
There are a couple things I've realized in the past two days. 1) Putting up posters and things on your walls actually takes a lot out of you. It involves more climbing and reaching than I remember. 2) I remembered my love for duck tape. I think it and I are about to re-enter a committed relationship.
All my junk isn't here yet. Ma' n' Pa' are being kind enough to make a second trip down here next weekend with the rest of my crap. Perhaps then I'll be fully move in. Until then, this suits me just fine.