What money?

Dear David Casner, VP, UChicago Alumni Board of Govenors,

I don't have a penny to spare to donate to your fund. Not for your university, not for pumping up prestige, not for helping to create unquantifiable numbers to go in brochures, not show other people how much your institution is loooooved by its young alums, not to support a place that shuffles along and pokes and prods the kids who don't want to learn your way, not to put extra shine on the windows of your new arts center, not to attach my name ever more to place that does not represent who I am in totality.

In short, I am other things before I am a UofC graduate. Sometimes I have a hard time figuring out what those things are, but this week I am a reader of Nabokov (Transparent Things, Lolita, whatever's in the house) and swimmer without goggles because I like the sting of chlorine in my eyes. This week I am busy shaking of a creepy cab driver on a drenched Saturday night who insists that I sit up front with him, have a cigarette with him before I head home, who grabs my hand and makes me employ not my social graces but my ability to tell someone to fuck off. I am busy shaking off bullshit and buying curtains.

So, it's awful presumptuous of you to ask me for money. If you think you know where my loyalties lie because you gave me an embossed piece of paper in maroon envelope, you, sir, are sorely mistaken.

T'mo

If I ever find forever, I will share it with you.

"Hello, darling," she says and looks me straight in the face. I blink.

"You look different," I say. "My nails are longer and your hair looks more mussed than it should be and your cadence flows sweetly where my voice sounds like a zipper being opened and closed. You're wearing that dress I don't want to wear and I'm wearing the one you won't wear ever. You're in the circle and I'm standing in front of the crowd. You've been rubbing your temples and I've been twirling my hair. But we're both wearing sunglasses. I'm lost. I'm confused - what exactly is going on here?"

Today I run smack dab into myself and we recognize each other immediately. We exchange bows, baos, and to-do lists. "Oh" we both murmur "that's you then" and can think of nothing more to say. We both saddle up for our days. A parting shot, "I like your necklace" or "Nice tights." We can't be best friends but we can learn to live with each other. We will pass each other in hallways, on the CTA, in cafes and we will nod to each other every time. There's no ignoring one another.

Culture of excellence, culture of hugs, culture of the upside down, culture of fog and wandering, culture of specificity, culture of no no no no thank you, culture of apology, culture of mourning, culture of why don't you call anymore, culture of leading to follow, culture of following to lead, culture of living in your head imagining your body doesn't exist, culture of living in your body imagining your head doesn't exist, culture of needing people, culture of lists, culture of winging it, culture of washing our hair, culture of playing the same three albums for three months, culture of knowing about persona.

Hi, me. Do you know when it's time to take over?

tingle tangle...pull one string and the others feel it

I've been thinking about the worlds we build together. The vortex you force into being with just you and a few other people. Last week I was thinking about time travel and after talking to Lelz about memory and shaping of the past through thought and interpretation, I've been thinking about the tangles of reality-bending groupdom that exist beyond time and space (though they are infintely bounded to us) that we have forged in the fires of our hearts. Wormholes, of the non-physics variety. Gravitational pulls of the charismatic type. I'm talking about radiance.

Edward said to Jane, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous Channel, and two hundred miles or so of land come broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, - you'd forget me."

And I believe that. It is the thing I have believed the longest. It is as close to a Bible verse or a benediction as you will get with me.


Do you know what it means to be a Sagittarius? I apparently can't believe in string. Knots should be beyond me. I couldn't tie my shoes if I tried. I should be warding off potential strings with a pair of trusty silver shears at all times. So what's the deal here? I am breathtakingly befuddled.

Where does all this come from anyway? Existence itself is an incomprehensible squall of accident and pure chance. A stew of unplanned happening, right? What then is the desire to frantically attach a web of strings to various creatures and persons and objects? And further to arrange the strings, to move and jockey and position one's self, to arrange those strings into a clean, pleasing, BEAUTIFUL in that it's meaningful way? Into a web, like a spider.

And the tangle of our veins. Here is a system I love: the cardio-vascular system. Perfectly positioned. But put one thing out of place and it all goes wrong. We build webs to match our veins, delicate as all get out. But we are capable of abstraction. We are capable of existing beyond what is natural, to rise above our nature. What kind of statement is that? Rising above our baser nature, is that not seeping reek of Christianity? But I think we could be more abstract. In love, I mean. In loving one another, we could be more abstract, don't you think?

And the second self? What if there is a third self? And a fourth self? More than one equal and more than one likeness? Or even, if there is no second self at all, no loss of you-ness because you never existed. What then would love or friendship or acquaintance-hood look like? No desire for completion, fulfillment, no unending search, no more Hugh Grant movies. Only contact. And really then, really, really, really, what would selfhood be? Could it be radiant, unshackled? Could we make defunct the phrase, "Defining myself by..."

I'm trying to say - I don't know if this is about me, or about you, or about us. I don't know if the horizon is getting blurry or if my eyes are getting worse. I looked to the internet (a new thing we are trying) and it said, "Take my yoke upon you, and learn of me; for I am meek and lowly in heart: ... Post this address all over the Internet and curious people will click to a ... Dear Leticia, This morning, I looked up at the beautiful blue sky, ... Thank you sharing in this wonderful year with us! ... Love & Gratitude, ..." and also "It also makes me wonder if we can't administer oxytocin to ameliorate some behavioral problems. .... the jackpots of treats would soon come to outweigh the fear of the trim. ... I assuaged my grief and need for fur contact by knitting up all the yarn ... when suddenly I am hanging on to their leashes for dear life"

Well. So, yes, I'll be knitting up all the yarn. And kissing. And hanging on for dear life.

Fanfare for Ms. E. F. C

Meine Dame Und Herren und everything in-between or beyond that spectrum,

I give you Em Le Fay
Erstwhile Englishwoman in the County of Fyfe (after the Thane thereof)
Scholar and Soon-to-be Asset Manager
Cross-Atlantic Nomad
All-Around Encyclopedia of Minutiae
Former Co-President of the Dramatic Society
Receiver of a Glass of White Wine
and
my friend, Former Citizen of My Heart

Quoth the Economics Student, "It's not like I'm going to be happy anyway, so I might as well do a job that makes me a good deal of money. Then I can retire and do what I like." Quoth the Follower of Dr. Johnson and Adam Smith, "It's hard to do a thing you love, why ruin it? Get out, while you can." Quoth she, "No one around me has got their head screwed on right."

I give you Em Le Fay
Wearer of Sensible Winter Coats and Good Jeans
Attendant of Assessment Pools
(which I gather are rather like group auditions)
Applicant to the Financial Giant J.P. Morgan Stanley
Half of Matt and Emma
Recaller of the Tiny Details of the Political Machinations of the Alma Mater
(and Extensive Recounter thereof)
Drinker of Blue Drinks
Giver of Earfuls
Former Partner-In-Crime

I can't really remember half the people she mentions in conversation. My mind is going is my excuse. That time I puked so hard vessels burst in my eyes cleared away most of 2004-2005. Don't mind me, I'm listening.

She says, "You know, [insert favorite teacher here] once told me that she was worried about you. Sort of unsure of where you would end up. Of who you'd be." I open my mouth to speak as this is news to me, but these days it's hard to get a word in edgewise. The last time we saw each other, she was but two days out of the removal of her wisdom teeth and still talked my ear off for nigh on seven turnings of the hour. I think, "We're not all that different, you and me, scrabbling for happiness on this unhappy plain."

I think, "Remember the evening when we were at school late and no one was around and it was pouring (like it is tonight) and we ran out onto the field made of ASTROTURF and dumped cans of Coke onto their precious and expensive lacrosse/field hockey pitch in an act of nascent radical violence? Before we knew those words? And how we howled in the night and ran giggling back inside to the stares of our less-bedraggled classmates and winked at each other for the offense we had committed? Do you remember? Well, do you?"

Exit Em Le Fay
Helena to my Hermia
Shylock to my Bassanio
One Half of a Pair of Strange Little Girls
Citizen of My Heart

BAO!

Slip Sliding Away

To do to prepare for going home:

• forget about cigarettes
• have back-up, secret place to smoke them just in case
• debate merits of bringing your laptop
• think of questions to ask your parents (dig inside your self for a lack of awkward)
• think of answers to questions your parents will ask you
  
• plan to excavate your basement (since it's in the jaws of the tag sale these days) for favorite scraps
• frantically try to clear away any administrative tasks to have a "relaxing vacation"
• reminisce about the times when your backpack was bigger than you and you wore a uniform and your dad drove you to school on his way to the train station and you had to shake the headmistress' hand after an older girl helped you out of the car
• try to pick a book, fail
• second guess your decision to buy a plane ticket
• pack the grubbiest, second-handiest clothes you own
• leave room for bringing back costume pieces
• get bored, jump around to Man Man for a while
• switch to Crystal Castles
• finish stuffing things in the bag, leaving folding in the past
• alert the one friend you actually want to see as to your whereabouts/travel plans
• steel yourself! hold on to what you've built!
  

Puddle brains: a fairytale

I want to post because it's been a whole whopping two days since someone wrote something and this blog should writhe like the tentacles its named after. But, I'm sleepy and it's very cold outside so my brains have denatured (oh you say but heat makes things denature not cold - that's why this is fairytale obvi) and I can't think of much to say. Other than:

I saw Toast's doppleganger today near Millenium Park.

I want to be in Edinburgh so badly right now.

I wish my hair were a duvet so I could fall asleep in it at work.

And with the sandwich of thoughts, I have a question! Are there any signifiers, archetypes, characters, totems, or historical figures you heavily identify with? This inquiring puddle mind wants to know.