Still breathing

Twice I thought I was going to die last night.

I saw bright red berries captured in ice, and the slick blue-white of tundra-esque iced/snowed-over fields, and the amber glow of building windows and streetlights and moving cars from atop a hill, and my heart almost broke from the sheer beauty of everything. I thought, This is a reason to spare the world. I thought, This is the night I die, because it would be very much like a kind world to show me this kind of magic, a sort of visual last hurrah, before it snuffed me out.

And later, in my creative writing class, I almost had a panic attack because I saw the lights outside the classroom flicker out and I thought, Someone has cut the hall lights. They're going to start shooting us all up, because where else would a school shooting start if not in this building that so many desperately unhappy English majors hate, and I'm going to get a bullet between the eyes because I'm sitting directly across from the window. And I very nearly got up to stand in the corner for the rest of class, regardless of how awkward it would be, but then I saw some people walk by and realized it was only the lights of the classroom across the hall that had been turned off by the custodian.

Obviously, I didn't die, and better yet, the director of the IWP came to talk to our class and mentioned that the Facebook group I'd made for the effort to start a creative writing major here at my school was a big selling point for the administrative powers that be. This was especially heart-warming news, as that was my only lasting contribution to this campaign and the only thing I'd imagined it would achieve was to serve as an information center for interested students. Pimping it out like mad in all of my classes and likely annoying my professors served a purpose, after all.

No Chametzky sighting today. The world will only understand my glee about this man if it attends a linguistics lecture by him. He is brilliant and adorable and quite small, and he makes me think of lemurs and muffins-in-baggies whenever I see him.

Three-Nights-of-Hands-Clasped-Against-the-Cold

I wonder if, when Francis Pharcellus wrote of supernal beauty, he had a Midwestern winter in mind. Somehow I doubt it. But he could have.

Because despite the slush, the puddles, the leaky roofs, despite the persistent and inexplicable drizzle in below-freezing temps, despite the wet feet, the dripping hair, the chilled fingers, there is something beautiful about today. The word "crystalline" comes to mind. Because if you look up from the treacherous sludge through which you trudge, up from watching your jeans darken up to the knee, you can glimpse a glittering world captured in ice. It is as though Jack Frost touched down in Iowa City but only for an instant, leaving miniature stalactites suspended from slender branches themselves sheathed in nature's glass, curled brown leaves forming the cores of little ice globes dangling from the skeletal trees like frozen fruit. Eddies of steam swirled across the concrete as I walked into my building. Beautiful.

In other news, several of the university's offices have closed, employees have refused to show up for work, and I am holding out hope that the class for which I have to give a presentation will be canceled this evening.

Go back to sleep

About a week ago I woke in the dark of my dorm room to a strange sound. My sleep-muddled mind leapt immediately to the paranoid conclusion that somebody was in my room, rustling about in the mess behind my desk, despite the fact that I knew I had closed and chain-locked the door. While I was still trying to decide how best to react (feign unconsciousness? grapple for the knife I keep by my pillow? tumble out of bed and make a mad dash for the door?), a tall, thin figure in the corner of my room said gently, "That sound is just the freezing rain hitting your window screen. There's nothing to worry about. Go back to sleep."

That last bit of advice made the most sense to me at the time, so I simply closed my eyes and went out like a light. The next morning I woke to an ice storm.

This has happened to me at least once before that I recall. I was younger then, and had a beloved stuffed animal that I toted about wherever I went. It was a white dog with black ears and tail and a big black spot on its back; I was as imaginative and talented with the naming of things as a child as I am now, and I called my plush companion Spot.

One morning I awoke to find Spot missing. He was not in my bed beside me, or on the floor beside or beneath my bed. The world turned upside down. I enlisted the rest of the household to search every nook and cranny in which this dog could have conceivably found itself, to no avail. I spent the rest of the day in a persistent state of shock. Then, as my bedtime approached and I was forced back to my room, I remembered a dream I had had the previous night in which a figure had neatly tucked my dog into my sock drawer and said, "He can spend the night here. Don't worry about him. Go back to sleep."

I hurtled across the room and wrenched open my sock drawer, and there Spot was, safe and sound, snuggling my balled-up socks.

Friends who have been in the room when I fell asleep have reported that I have this unsettling habit of sitting bolt upright, looking wide-eyed around the room, and uttering a line of dialog with no discernible significance to anything else that has been said, before flopping back down unconscious. I am beginning to wonder if this has any relation to the persons? creatures? beings? that seem to accompany me in those confusing stages between wakefulness and sleep, reporting the weather and hiding my toys.

what is lost can never be saved

My dad says that if I'm looking for something to believe in, I should return to what is familiar to me: Roman Catholicism. And there are a lot of aspects of that religion that do still appeal to me, but just as many that frustrate me. I think that there may be too much anger, too many harsh words, too great a difference between us to make a full reconciliation possible. But I didn't burst into flames in the Vatican, and Jesus still smiles when we talk.

very funny

It's hard to deny that the cosmos has a sense of humor when I get my period on Thanksgiving.

worldrise (or fall[?])

Save the world or destroy it. There is no acceptable middle ground.

I am the Darkness

The other night I dreamt that a friend was being pestered by this freaky black demon?spirit?cat-thing with an overlarge head and a disproportionately wide mouth with very long, almost triangular teeth. Cartoonish, really, except that it was rather terrifying and occupying my friend's closet. She asked me to help her get rid of it and I had no idea how I was supposed to accomplish this. This cat was made of some serious stuff, and apparently fancied itself a servant of an immeasurably vast, ancient, powerful entity collectively referred to as the Darkness, with which I had in this dream been working for some time.

So finally, after a few fearful and unsuccessful attempts to roust the demoncat out of my friend's closet with a broom, I decided that the only other recourse was for me to invoke the Darkness and face the cat. And so I did, despite the fact that I was deeply concerned about the possibility that this thing would wipe out all traces of what made me me. I walked carefully up to the demoncat filled to the skin with this alien energy, my sense of self balancing precariously on a tightrope over a sea of Darkness sloshing in my brainpan, and stood about three feet from the closet in which the demoncat was hissing and spitting and showing off its many teeth and puffing up in a threatening manner. I said in a voice that was mostly my own, "Oh, little kitty, I AM the Darkness." And it flared up behind me, a tidal wave of the devouring black of space stretching into infinity, and engulfed us both, and when it was receded, the cat was gone, but I remained.

I think this dream was meant to reassure me, or empower me, or tempt me over to the Dark Side with cookies, or something. I suppose an underlying concern with invocation of ANYTHING was always the fear that it would take me over for always, because I don't have a strong enough sense of identity to fight for it, for control. (This was and is also the reason I refrained from serious study in demonology.)

Rage, my old friend, helped me get things done. I could move mountains when the red mist descendeth, because it meant action without over/thinking, and when it took over it left no room for fear or doubt, and I accomplished a lot of good because of it. But as I got older it left me more drained, with an unpleasant headachey feeling, and it was hurting people I liked, so I went to the anger management sessions that helped me chase it away. And so now I don't fly into screaming, flailing, violent fits at the drop of a hat, but I also feel empty, apathetic, dulled. The rare occasions that I did lose myself to that all-encompassing fury in the past couple of years, it felt warm and familiar, even nostalgic, but it still made me tired, and it was still more detrimental than anything.

Maybe I just want something to fill me again, give me that assurance, that drive. Maybe this Darkness thing, whatever it is, is looking for a friend. I like making new friends.

hi!bye

Hey Ronton,

So Samhain, or All Hallow's, is supposed to be that time out of the year during which the veil between the worlds of the living and the dead are at their most fragile, and the spirits of those who've passed can come a-wandering. I don't know why you'd be one of them, since you were obviously champing at the bit to get the hell out of here, but just in case: I wanted you to know that I was thinking of you, and that I miss you and love you still.

Funny story: I thought I saw you earlier this semester. I was at the Java House (a cozy little coffee place here in Iowa City, Iowa [I KNOW, okay, but you can go hug your cacti, AZ-boy]) with a few of my friends, facing the window, and I could've sworn I saw you walk by. I just sat and stared until he passed out of view, fighting the urge to run out after you!him. I don't think any of my friends noticed. He had your dark hair (slicked back like yours [so much gel, boy]), your pale skin tone, your jaw line, but he kept his face turned away so I couldn't see his eyes. Would he have had yours?

But that's happened to me a few times--seeing people who weren't there, I mean. This was just the first time that the person in question really was dead. I suspect that some faulty wiring in my brain causes it to occasionally regurgitate old memories, confusing my eyes into thinking that they're seeing said old image anew, or something like that. Anyway. Whether or not that was just a neuro-hiccup, it was nice seeing you.


Bye, babe. See you on the flip side. ;)

Strange angles

Honestly, I've never read Watchmen or Swamp Thing. I bloody well own V for Vendetta but have yet to peruse it. I have never finished From Hell, and have read no further than the very first volume of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. I've only read a few volumes of Hellblazer, and anyway, none of those were written by Alan Moore. But the man had a lot of influence on Neil Gaiman, and I've read pretty much everything of his that I could get my hands on, and there are very few people in the world I respect more. So traces of the blatant hero-worship I have of Gaiman are transferred to Mr. Moore, which is why, when I stumbled across this YouTube video, I actually watched it.

"Alan Moore is a writer and magician from Northampton. He's a stranger to hairdressers and worships his very own gods in his very own way, blurring the lines between religious belief, magic, and the power of the creative imagination. If you film him from strange angles, you can make him look very sinister."
Stewart Lee cannot help but make a potshot at our president, but then, Lee is English and Bush is eminently mockable. Unfortunately this clip cuts short just as Lee begins to address some serious concerns about religion in government and schools today.

Work miracles and play forever

Fictionlag ['fIk ʃən læg] noun : a condition that is characterized by various psychological and physiological effects, occurs following long periods of exposure to and concentrated involvement in various fictitious media.

For example, upon reviewing my dietary habits (Easy Mac, a spoonful of Nutella, and No-Doz), it occurred to me that an acceptable alternative would be to download myself into foglets. I was then reminded that this procedure exists only in the postcyberpunk world of Warren Ellis, and was disappointed.

Back on the street

I went out to get fresh blood today because I didn't trust the old stuff. On my way back home, I swung by the library to more thoroughly search the shelves for volume 1 of Transmetropolitan, a quest that met with no success. The computer catalog claimed that it had been checked in since September, but there was a conspicuous empty space where it should have been in physicality, a hiccup in the Dewey Decimal stream.

Unruffled, I went to the comic book store down the street; every volume of the series was on the shelf. Well, every volume but one--the first one, the one I needed. How suspicious, thought I, but chalked it up to unhappy circumstance and went instead to Prairie Lights, where I was stunned to discover that there was not a single volume of Transmetropolitan to be found. And then I knew that I had stumbled upon a city-wide conspiracy so sinister, so diabolical that it could confound the senses and render a casual observer incapable of perceiving the threat. Unheimlich.

Walking along the backways, I passed a house with an honest-to-gods tower: round, and capped with a three-foot spire. I knew instantly that the house's inhabitants were somehow connected. No one has roofs that pointy unless they are involved with some seriously shady dealings.

Just before I crossed the final street, I noticed something that had been on that corner for years but which I had never remarked upon: a standard blue government-issued mail dropbox. Commonplace enough, but not so mundane considering that just across the street is another dropbox. Why would there need to be two so close to one another? Clearly, one of them was suspect. But who could be responsible? Surely not W.A.S.T.E., though it would be clever for them to disguise their operations in the colors of their sworn enemy. The government itself made for an easy scapegoat; after all, the United States Postal Service had been putting me through the wringer all semester, withholding my mail, testing my nerve, pushing me to the edge with their deliberately discombobulating decrees and guidelines. I had been weighed and measured and, to all appearances, released from my ordeals. And I've seen my father, longtime employee of the USPS, transcribing data in his journals. Keeping tabs.

Well, you can scribble all the psychoanalytical notes you want. Even as you monitor me, I am observing you. And I, a contentious product of these postmodern postliterate postselfretentive posting-obsessed times, can blog with the best of them.

Unhappy fishy :(

I finally changed my betta's water, and now he's sulking at the bottom of his bowl. C'mon, Cervantes, embrace life! Rebuild your bubble nests anew!

The last time she phoned, my mum sounded surprised to hear that Cervantes was still alive after spending a week in my care. I don't blame her; I once owned a wee cactus plant that withered up from dehydration. D:

Really, I don't know why I keep selfishly surrounding myself with tiny creatures whose survival is dependent on me when I so clearly possess the Hand of Death.

ETA: And now he's bashing his head against the inside of the bowl in an apparent attempt to commit suicide by brainbursty asdfk;klj?!

Ink

My parents don't understand body modification. And while I realize that this statement smacks of melodramatic teenage prose ("SIGH nobody understands me, I'm all alone in this colddarkworld, my parental units were young when the Earth's crust cooled and couldn't possibly get me"), I stand by it. What makes the generational gap a little more difficult to navigate is that besides being parents, they're Koreans, and Confucianism still runs rampant back in the mother country (other than preaching blatant misogyny, our boy Confucius declaimed body modification [piercing, tattoos, cutting one's hair] as an insult to one's ancestors). Ironically, or perhaps a little hypocritically, both of my parents have gotten cosmetic surgery/tattoos; in my mother's case, both. And as I may be disowned if I reveal any more deepdarkfamilysecrets, I'll leave it at that.

The notion that tattoos are solely the domain of prison inmates, gangsters, and generally unpleasant folks (oh, and those affiliated with some military organization) is still strong in "first world" countries, but society is changing. Our generation in particular is providing the impetus for that change. More and more teenagers and twenty-somethings are getting ink as tributes to dead loved ones, as testaments of love for living family and friends, or simply for the aesthetic appeal. We simply have a different idea of aesthetics, not unusual in a species whose idea of aesthetics is subject to change on a generational basis. It is not so uncommon to see white-collared employees with body modifications--my AP English teacher proudly displayed her ankle tat, though my college anthro instructor and English professor try to keep theirs tucked away. Tech support folks are veritably clothed in all manner of geeky ink, and librarians sport literary quotes or Dewey decimal numbers on their skin. Some public relations or customer service workers are even encouraged not to hide their body mods--for them, looking like the people they help is an asset. I would not be the least bit surprised if one day the norm is to have tattoos, multiple piercings, and cybernetic limbs. Okay, so that last one is just wishful thinking. I write specfic, it's allowed.

Anyway, I got another tattoo, and it's awesome.

Mom: Bwaah I didn't even tell your father yet about your first one!
Me: I told him!
Mom: When?
Me: This summer! Before I went to school.
Mom: What? He never mentioned anything to me!

I just think it's cute that each of my parents were apparently trying to cover my ass. XD

And then my mum insisted that she would be driven clinically insane if I got another tattoo (though she would retain enough of her mental faculties to cut off my college funding) and made me swear blind that I wouldn't get anything else done until I turned 25 at the earliest. My original bid was for when I graduate from UIowa in a year and a half, and hers was the age of 30, she insisting that the older I am the more certain I'd be that I wouldn't regret a permanent addition to my body, I maintaining that at 30 I may as well start having my mail forwarded to Death's doorstep.

People say that when you're young, you think you're invincible. Why then do I see memento mori reflected in every surface, waiting to wing me to my untimely yet somehow ironically implemented demise? Too many horror novels/comics/movies, I don't doubt.

This is the face of true horror.

I often have nightmares. I dream of wars, assassination attempts, werewolf infestations, past-life possessions. Blood, fatalities, screaming confusion, and dismemberment abounds in my slumbering noggin.

Last night I dreamt that I'd gone to one psychology lecture and had forgotten entirely that I was registered for that class until I received a midterm notification.

Most. Horrifying. Dream. Evar.

bogeys

So maybe you have that little voice in the back of your head that tries to help you be a good human and be happy and learn things you need to know to be a fulfilled soul. Maybe you have more than one, and maybe they're not just voices but have manifested in forms both familiar and comforting to you. (Some people call these not-just-voices spirit guides or guardian angels or totems or fylgja or daemons.) Maybe they're shaped like a red fox and a black panther and this isn't as general and impersonal as a certain blogger might like you to believe. Anyway.

So let's say that there are times when you are a bit jumpy, scared of nameless shapeless potential dangers that could just be your overactive imagination conjuring monsters out of nothing, and you call on these beings to help you out and they say things like "Don't be afraid" and "There's nothing there" and "You really should stop watching horror flicks after dark." But then let's say that another such occasion has arisen and instead of making mildly scornful comfort-noises, they say, "Try not to attract it's attention" and "Don't run, just calmly walk away."

I think you'd be scared to go back, too. :P

Another day, another blog

The other day I was feeling desperately unhappy with breakfast, and it reminded me of another miserable morning meal that was saved by a boy with owleye glasses and an apron. The apron was because he worked at the Burge dining hall and was behind the breakfast bar that fateful morning when I staggered into the dining hall, stressed out and haggard.

It was my first semester at college and midterms were afoot. I was not having a good day and I'd only been awake for a couple hours, which did not bode well. I thought, The one and only bright spot in my immediate future, the single thing that will salvage this day is the fact that I am about to partake in tasty biscuits-'n'-gravy. There were two left in the bin, one for the guy in front of me if he so chose, and one for me, right? But no! No, the evil overlord bent on wreaking chaos and despair who had disguised himself as a college student took BOTH BISCUITS. I reeled. My world was shattered.

You know that moment that housewives who have hacked their husbands to itty bitty pieces and taken an electric eggbeater to their juicy innards describe as "the breaking point"? I think I hit mine. I stared blankly at the empty biscuit bin, unable to respond. My right eye twitched. Then I saw that owleyed boy come around the corner carrying a steaming bin of... of...!

Tri-taters. Bitter disappointment.

But that blessed university employee took one look at my expression and hastily set the tri-taters aside on the nearest available surface with an utterance of "I'll be right back." Then he ran to fetch a fresh bin of biscuits, thus saving my day as well as that of everyone within a 50-foot radius who I may well have beaten to death in a blind and senseless fury with my breakfast tray.

I took my biscuit and gravy and poured myself some chocolate milk and joyfully attacked my plate for six minutes before rushing off to take my midterm, which I didn't fail. The end.

Some people might tell me that such anecdotes have no place in a blog intended for spiritual ramblings but to them I say that our lord Jesus was in that boy with the owleyed glasses, and it was by His grace that my biscuity salvation drew so hastily nigh, hallelujah!

Sometimes I get really angry or sad at the human species and think there is no saving us, but then I remember that there are people like the Biscuit Boy and I think, maybe we're not so bad, after all.