Notes from all over; Poetry Monday

In life:

• 9 days until the Lands of Eire/Anglos CARNAVALE OF FANTASTIC-NESS. (Wow, I’m really running out of fun names for the Ireland/England Trip. I want to just call it the UK Adventure, but technically where I’m going in Ireland isn’t part of the UK. So. You get stuff like what just unfortunately dropped out of my sad, tired brain.)

• My best friend gave her senior flute recital on Sunday and blew everyone’s mind. People in the audience were literally stunned silent between pieces–there were a few rapt and troubled whispers of, “That was really good,” as if they were afraid of her Beastness. And they probably should be. Psh.

• I’m pretty much home free except for finishing my poetry chapbook and writing 2 papers–I should probably be acting more like I have work and finals coming up, but apparently I’m going to have to do this the hard way, the way which involves me freaking the hell out for 3 days when I could have spread it all out over a week and a half.

• This video? Is the best thing I have ever seen.

• I recently joined Digg, which is a user-based news feed site of sorts if you’ve never heard of it (That’s a truly horrendous description, it’s so much more than that). I joined partly because of mild peer pressure on Matt’s behalf, and partly because apparently I want to be completely distracted every moment of the day. An unfortunate side effect of having access to so many interesting news stories is that I get really, really upset about something at least once a day. Yesterday I got all flustered and angry about the comments section in an article about biased school textbooks (and made the mistake of chiming in–YIPES), and today I read an article about Harry Potter being added to British curricula as a piece of canonical literature…and again, it really was the comments section that threw me for a loop. So many people disagreeing! So many people making snide remarks to strangers who were just throwing in their two cents! WHY CAN’T WE ALL JUST GET ALONG?!

***

And now, without further adieu. A Poetry Monday tribute to jazz and Michael S. Harper, by Miss Rita Dove:

Canary

Billie Holiday’s burned voice

had as many shadows as lights,

a mournful candelabra against a sleek piano,

the gardenia her signature under that ruined face.

(Now you’re cooking, drummer to bass,

magic spoon, magic needle.

Take all day if you have to

Fact is, the invention of women under siege

has been to sharpen love in the service of myth.

If you can’t be free, be a mystery.

***

How was your weekend?

21 Things About Me

So I never got to the second half of my birthday entry. But that’s okay. The gist of it: Boyfriend bought a webcam so I got to see his animate face for the first time in 3 1/2 months and it was joyous; my family came up to school to eat dinner and formally present me with the booking confirmations for my England/Ireland Adventure.

First official business as a 21-year-old?

A self-important list, of course.

21 Facts About 21-Year-Old Me

1) I almost exclusively drink water–soda hurts my mouth, juice just makes me more thirsty.

2) Matt is my first boyfriend.

3) I am really good at untangling delicate necklaces, electrical cables, and messes of knotted yarn.

4) I take scalding hot showers (but am trying to stop).

5) I went to sleep-away camp for 3 years when I was a pre-teen and they were the most important lessons in socialization in my life.

6) I’m 100% Filipino, genetically at least. My mom and dad came to America in about 1984, met there, and got married a year later.

7) That makes me a first-generation American.

In 8th grade I decided I wanted to be an English teacher.

9) My career goals before I decided on teaching were, in chronological order: cleaning lady, Miss America, grade school teacher, famous actress, famous singer, film director, journalist/magazine columnist.

10) The career goals that I have briefly optioned since abandoning my teaching career last semester are: ad copy writer (yeah, no), publishing/editing type stuff, webmaster/webpage designer, professional blogger (HAHAHA I WISH) and the current one, writer/freelance writer.

11) I have been collecting all things Alice since about 7th or 8th grade, and I own what has to be at least one hundred pieces of Alice-In-Wonderland related memorabilia.

12) As a grade-school kid I became inexplicably attached to van Gogh’s famous “Starry Night” painting and have also been collecting anything related to van Gogh since around 7th or 8th grade as well. My Alice collection is admittedly much larger and more impressive.

13) I’m pretty superstitious: I knock on wood, I throw salt over my shoulder if I spill some, I’m completely freaked out by the number 6 in triples.

14) And yet, I recently developed the desire to own a black cat with green eyes and name it Kefka. Or Kafka, maybe.

15) I love dogs, too, probably more than cats, and it’s pretty much a given that I will own one someday. Right now I’m really into Welsh corgis. My dad thinks they look like Gremlins.

16) When I was 16 years old I traveled to Spain for 2 1/2 weeks through my high school’s foreign exchange program. My need to return outweighs my need to procure employment and lodging after graduating college.

17) I get excited for school every year because I love buying school supplies.

18) I read really, really fast.

19) I write kind of fast, too.

20) I’m just under 5 feet tall. Yeah.

21) I had my first kiss in preschool, with a boy named Justin during movie time. I was a the class slut, apparently.

**

Whee! That was totally fun. I’m going to expand this into the obligatory 100 Facts one day. Just not today. Because I am going to watch Monty Python and the Holy Grail now instead.

der ner ner ner ner ner YOU SAY IT’S YOUR BIRTHDAYY

The digital display blinked green: 12:00.

You’re 21 today, I whispered to myself, sitting at my desk. Happy Birthday. I looked around and tried to capture the moment. In front of me, a bag of garbage teetering on the edge of the trash bin it belonged in. To my left, an unmade bed, teeming with College Student Detritus: an open backpack, a sweatshirt, my pajamas, my iPod. I resisted the urge to feel sorry for myself as best as I could and resumed work on the outline for my World Religions presentation.

Happy Birthday, I whispered again, and this time the words curled the corners of my mouth upward.

***

I anticipated a low-key birthday. And the day before, I actually got kind of Woe-Is-Me about it, but my cousin Abbey, She Of The Wisdom Which Surpasses Her Years, helped me out of that particular funk. Since I didn’t presume that anyone was necessarily going to make my birthday special for me, I took her advice and decided to make it special for myself.

Basically, that means I shopped.

This shirt is emblazoned with what is known as The Death Waltz. It is the best shirt I have ever seen in my life. It was my birthday present to myself.

Oh how I wish someone would perform this piece.

I bought these sunglasses on a whim. They look absurd on me; I completely cannot pull them off, but I love how the pink-purple rims glow in my peripheral vision and frame everything in rose.

Then I journeyed to Barnes and Noble and bought these two books. I just love bookstores. Almost as much as shoe stores. I wish they could combine the lovely, quiet, bookiness of bookstores with the delicious, rubbery, sneakery, high-off-magic-markers smell of shoe stores. I think I’d never leave.

***

My trendy new sunglasses muted the early afternoon sunshine a bit, but even so, I could feel it neon and outrageous on my arms. I can feel my skin cells mutating, I thought. Still, I couldn’t help but feel grateful for the delicious weather on my birthday, the second year in a row.

***

Let’s play a game. What is this?

It’s Alice In Wonderland-related, yes.

Is it stickers? Stock photography on the internet? Wrapping paper?

Or is it perhaps part of a CRAZY-ASS ALICE IN WONDERLAND EXTRAVAGANZA that was sent to me by Katie-In-Ireland and that arrived the day before my birthday?!?!

I almost died when I opened the envelope. I challenge anyone to beat this present.

(Did you guys all know that I’m unhealthily obsessed with Alice In Wonderland? Well. Now you know.)

***

Later on tonight I think I’ll write another entry recounting the afternoon-half of my birthday, alternately titled: Wherein Melissa’s Boyfriend Does A Very Sweet Birthday Gesture And All Her Readers Vomit; Wherein Melissa Consumes Warm Chocolate Cake With Ice Cream In The Presence Of Her Surprisingly Loving Family.

But for now I’m taking my little Frosh Friend Rachel to the post office because she doesn’t have a car.

Adios!

just a little distracted

Some of you may be wondering about my upcoming trip to Ireland and England. But probably not. But since I can’t stop thinking about it, I figured I’d use this blog to divulge all the grisly details of who/when/what/how and why. For my own sick amusement. Here we goooooo:

MELISSA’S IRELAND/ENGLAND EXTRAVAGANZA BLOWOUT CONFETTI CARNIVAL

I’ll start in Ireland. I’m leaving the US in the evening on May 7th and arriving in Shannon at like, 6 AM. Then the plan is to locate a bus company called like Eirann or Aerann or Eirenn Bus (crazy Celts) and go on a Bus Adventure to Galway, which is where my dearest friend Katie has been staying for almost 4 whole months!

If my sources are reliable (and by “sources” I mean Katie’s online photo album and a quick Googling), Galway is extremely picturesque and very quaint and consists of many adorable street shops where I can irresponsibly buy hand-forged silver jewelry and other such sundries. Katie’s definitely big on agendas and planning, so I’m sure she’ll have thought of a whole bunch of activities to do and sights to see–it’ll be really nice to be sort of ushered around a new place by someone who already knows what’s cool.

On the 11th I’m taking an Epic Journey to England, or maybe I’m just getting on a 1.5-hour flight from Galway to Newcastle, where Matt will be waiting for me and where we’ll run toward one another in slow-motion and I’ll throw my luggage and backpack down and jump into his arms and he’ll swing me about as onlookers smile knowingly and the airport speakers suddenly blare, “RE-UN-ITED, AND IT FEEEELS, SO GOOOOOOD!”

Ahem.

Not that I’ve been…fantasizing about it, or anything.

While we’re in Newcastle I plan on being, in the immortal words of Juno MacGuff, a piece of furniture in his life. I’m pretty excited to simply be with him, to see what it is he sees every day, to go to the places he’s been going for almost four months, to meet all the friends he’s made. But I’m also thinking, OMG VACATION IN ENGLAND LET’S GO TO MUSEUMS AND STORES AND AQUARIUMS AND EAT FISH AND CHIPS WHEEEEEEE.

That, I suppose, is the reason that on May 15th, Matt and I are taking another 1.5-hour flight from Newcastle to Heathrow, where we’ll stay at a nearby hotel and take a train into London for two whole glorious days of Unabashed Tourism. I’ve been planning the little weekend excursion like it’s my freaking JOB, I’m so excited.

And then on the 17th. I depart.

And the heavens shall weep.

Tell me, if you had a trip like that coming up, wouldn’t you be a little distracted from doing things like studying for tests and writing 6 pages of poetry and finishing a 20-page research paper due in three days? I think yes.

Now I’m going to make an unnecessarily specific list of everything I’m going to pack. Bye.

Poetry Monday, 21st Birthday Edition

It’s come to my recent attention that my 21st birthday is on Wednesday. I’m wasn’t sure how to explain how I feel about it, so I think I’ll leave it up to one of my favorite, favorite Billy Collins poems, that many of you have been forced to read by me before.

On Turning Ten

The whole idea of it makes me feel
like I’m coming down with something,
something worse than any stomach ache
or the headaches I get from reading in bad light–
a kind of measles of the spirit,
a mumps of the psyche,
a disfiguring chicken pox of the soul.

You tell me it is too early to be looking back,
but that is because you have forgotten
the perfect simplicity of being one
and the beautiful complexity introduced by two.
But I can lie on my bed and remember every digit.
At four I was an Arabian wizard.
I could make myself invisible
by drinking a glass of milk a certain way.
At seven I was a soldier, at nine a prince.

But now I am mostly at the window
watching the late afternoon light.
Back then it never fell so solemnly
against the side of my tree house,
and my bicycle never leaned against the garage
as it does today,
all the dark blue speed drained out of it.

This is the beginning of sadness, I say to myself,
as I walk through the universe in my sneakers.
It is time to say good-bye to my imaginary friends,
time to turn the first big number.

It seems only yesterday I used to believe
there was nothing under my skin but light.
If you cut me I could shine.
But now when I fall upon the sidewalks of life,
I skin my knees. I bleed.

spring fever

I’m dismayed at the amount of posts in here that have been about school and presentations and papers and meh. But it’s the home stretch and that means in 2 weeks you won’t have to hear me talk about Stravinsky anymore ever again! O REJOICE AND BE GLAD IN IT.

The weather is making me deliriously happy. Yesterday my sister and I went for a bike ride around the neighborhood and ended up at my elementary school playground. Dude, kids today have the LAMEST playground equipment ever. It’s all like, rounded and safe and low to the ground and primary-colored. Their slide is shaped like a dinosaur and slopes at maybe a 20-degree angle. People, do you remember our playgrounds? The rickety swings that cut up your hands? The 50-foot tall monkey bars made of welded steel? The completely vertical slides heating up to upwards of 120 degrees Fahrenheit in the sun??

I’d also like to point out that woodchips are the devil. Why make children play in wood chips? I’m calling shenanigans on that. There is no way that wood chips are safe. Splinters galore! Mold lurking below the top layer! Bad plan all around.

But anyway.

Today I’m thinking of maybe washing my car and cleaning/detailing it because a) it’s gorgeous outside, b) my car is GRODY, and c) DID I MENTION THE GORGEOUS. But thus far I have done little except watch Shaun of the Dead on Comedy Central, and chatter excitedly with my parents and sister about my upcoming trip to Ireland and England.

Oh also we had three bees in the house.

Right.

I’m gonna. Go wash my car now. Have a Happy Saturday, all!

dispatch from stravinskyland

My brain hurts.

It’s too crammed with information.

It feels itchy.

Itchy brain auuughhhh.

I might be turning into a zombie.

(God, I hope so.)

the final update.

So those notes I had at like, 5 PM, are now a full-on script that I’m probably going to have to straight-up memorize because we’re not supposed to have “superfluous notes” in our presentations. I still have some things left to work on but I needed to stop because I love The Rite of Spring but I have listened to that bassoon solo way more times in 3 hours than someone really should.

I’m actually kind of exhausted right now and I’m reading my entries back and they seem almost annoyingly manic. I have SO much energy in the morning and afternoon, which is basically unlike anyone else I know. I start to crash around 2, get my second wind around dinnertime, and then get cranky in the evening when I start to get tired. That’s probably why Matt and I used to fight so much–we always talked at like, 11:30 at night.

Speaking of The Boyfriend, it’s 11 months today. I guess that’s sort of an arbitrary number, but its significance to me is that right around this time last year, Matt and I were sort of orbiting each other, going for friendly barefoot walks around campus at his request, hunting for pie at 1 AM, flirting with each other via Facebook and AIM. It makes my heart bounce to remember those infant stages of our relationship, how cutely hesitant we both were and how it’s all evolved since then. It’s the anniversary of When We Discovered Each Other. That’s something to celebrate, isn’t it?

***

One more update: I have a Bookflix List in Very Early Stages! Thank you all those who participated!

Thus Far:

The Last Summer Of You And Me, Ann Brashares (Thank you Linds!)
The Abstinence Teacher, Tom Perotta (Thank you Amanda!)
Bitter Is The New Black, Jen Lancaster (Thank you, Jen! Because you pimped her in your Guest Blog!)
A Heartbreaking Work Of Staggering Genius, Dave Eggers
No Country For Old Men, Cormac McCarthy
Survivor, Chuck Palahniuk

Heard anything good/bad/juicy about any of those?

***

And now I sleep. Because I am an Old Lady.

webby distractions

Regarding the presentation: We have NOTES, people. What I’m seeing here is, ah, a piece of paper that, ah, appears to have some sort of… structured, heirarchical list. Written on it. More news to follow. Back to you, Jim.

This is my new distract-y website. Check out my personal faves:

see more funny graphs

see more funny graphs

see more funny graphs

see more funny graphs

Thank you, Internet. Thank you so much.

Three-Hour Update!

Three-hour update:

• I went outside! It’s a balmy 61 degrees and there is what Weather.com likes to call “abundant sunshine” and what I call “OMGZORS MY RETINAS THEY BURN.”
• I went to the school bookstore because I still haven’t found this goddamn book and I’m going to need it soon. And there were NO textbooks there. The shelves were EMPTY and blocked off by those seat-belt things that Subway uses to corral customers into an orderly line!? What, was it a textbook crime scene investigation? I was sort of irked.
• Outside of the bookstore there was some sort of activities fair going on and I saw CBS News there interviewing people. I have no idea what was going on. Oooh, a MYSTERY. More updates on that to come!
• I decided to walk around campus and listen to my iPod because I wasn’t ready to retreat to the townhouse yet. I came across about fifteen Goody Ouchless hairbands orphaned on the sidewalk. (Matt actually brought this to my attention last year when we first started hanging out–they are EVERYWHERE. What are people DOING? Just scattering them willy-nilly at random intervals? Is there a hairband fairy who visits our campus every night? Can we replace her with a hundred-dollar-bill fairy??)
• I came back and my Internet wasn’t working so I turned on MTV and LO AND BEHOLD, TRUE LIFE MARATHON. Certainly the universe is telling me to procrastinate on the presentation a little longer to watch “True Life: I’m a Southern Belle.”
• And that’s where we are at this point. I might go outside again to visit the library and take out the DVD recording of The Rite of Spring. So I can say I at least did something relating to this project.

Another post later, I’m sure. This is actually sort of fun. I think I’d probably get along very, very well with Twitter.