I don’t have much to share today in the way of narratives, but I would like to post a little something from “Caroline Smith and the Good Night Sleeps”–a band I recently discovered when buying tickets to a Cloud Cult show. They represent the part of Indie music that I love so much: enjoying yourself on stage with a reckless abandon befitting joyous children.
Sometimes no. Via a very trusted source, I’ve recently undertaken a trip into the strange, quirky, and often freaky world of Supernatural. (This picture of Sam and Dean was the furthest I could get from what I can only imagine were boy band photo shoots.) I was a little unsure of the show at first, not because it didn’t hook me (1×01 both set up an interesting narrative scope for future eps and plowed right into some interesting themes of family, individuality) but because I wasn’t sure I could take how scary it was. I’m not the most doughty of spirit when it comes to scary movies; in fact, my friend K likes to bring up a time where a few of us were watching a certain scary movie while I attempted to watch the movie through the filter of her teddy bear’s fur. I don’t think I’ve ever held a real person that close to my body.
Well, at the persistent urging of the recommender that the pilot was one of the more scary episodes and that the narrative, while initially episodic, later trends toward a longer-lasting arc, I gave the next episode (Wendigo) a go. Although I thought it was a bit weaker than the pilot, I still very much enjoyed the episode for a few reasons. First, like BtVS and T:SCC, the show has not necessarily a campy humor, but a very specific type of storytelling. It requires you to be a certain viewer, to dig certain elements of narrative and character, and I happen to be one of those people. Also, I’m not sure if this should reveal something profound about my inner workings, but I am really attracted to stories about constructed (or broken and reconstructed) families. In Buffy, it would be easy to say that a major theme is friendship, but it would be just as much a truth to say that the scoobies become a family, with each person taking on a certain role and acting a specific, necessary part to make the chemistry of the group work. Firefly is also a really great example of this: the crew of ‘Serenity’ functions as a *unique* constructed family of honest thieves, adorable mechanics, lovey-dovey adults, mysterious preachers, and even Jane, who is not a girl. In much the same way, Sam and Dean have aspects of their relationship that must be constructed since they have been apart for so long. Dean is very much his father’s son and Sam is very much not, a separation which forces them to often ask of one another, “Do we need to talk about this,” a question which shows me that their relationship is in a place of uncertainty. Yes, they are brothers, but they are also strangers to one another, and part of the great fun for me has been watching them meet each other again.
Well, the Uberman didn’t work so well for me. I managed about 2 days or so and gave up. I wish I could cite some excellent reason that stopped me from following through with the plan, but really I just couldn’t do it. It was too tough and during that 2nd day, I kind of forgot why I was even attempting the craziness. Either way, I was defeated in the great sleep battle. Schade um.
Recently, a group of us here at school have been journeying through the seasons of Buffy, beginning with 2 (since 1 is *slightly* sub-par) and currently in the midst of season 3 (oh Band Candy, how I love that episode). It’s been a lot of fun to watch my favorite show of all time, what I consider to be some of the best narrative television, with a group of people who were anywhere between mixed-feelings to “yeah, I sorta like it” beforehand. Watching episode after episode in that community has reminded me of falling in love with Willow, Xander, Buffy, Oz, Giles (and his clucking noise when he gets angry). My friends have been experiencing the growth of these characters and the decisions made for the first time and it all is serving to renew my fannish <3 for the scoobies and all they go through. Having a community of people with whom I can share great quotes, crazy twists, and extraordinary moments is and has been a really neat fannish phenomenon. I missed my show.
Although my original plan was to do a blog post after each nap, I think it would actually be better to update once a day. If I get to the point where I have so much to write that I’m literally bursting at the seams (yeah, my actual seams, bursting and stuff), well, I’ll change my tune and start updating multiple times in a day. 3 naps down and only feeling slightly tired!
Exhaustion: 1.5
Prompted by my frustration last semester at not being able to do fun stuff in equal measure with homework due to time constraint or perhaps fueled by my ever present urge to do crazy, possibly dumb, but definitely exciting things, I have decided (along with a few friends) to hop aboard the Uberman sleeping schedule train. Although I don’t think it will be a forever-kind-of-thing (it doesn’t work out too well with the real world, I guess), I do think it will be fun, challenging, and ultimately kinda neat. I plan on using this textual space to write about how things are going on the Uberman front, but I’m hoping one of the bonuses of having all of this extra time (22.5 hour days!) will be more blogging in general. I’ll be doing updates after each of my naps until I am confident that I am fully on the new schedule, which looks like:
AM
1:40-1:55
5:40-5:55
9:40-9:55
PM
1:40-1:55
5:55-6:10
9:40-9:55
Since I just finished my first nap and am fresh from a long night of sleep last night, I don’t really have much to talk about, nor will I (probably) for the next few naps. However, I’ve heard that the early parts of the Uberman are great for crazy dreams–maybe I’ll get new story ideas or fun blog posts.
Exhaustion: 0
Today I was working on the final supplemental materials for my grad. applications and I realized something: I’m genuinely excited for graduate school. Now, I understand that I may not get in and if that’s the case, well, that sucks. I’ve spent the last few months with my head either buried in applications or filled with thoughts concerning applications and somewhere along the way I stopped thinking about why I wanted to go to graduate school and started thinking of the application process as just another painful, monotonous obligation. While finishing up my applications today, I had to provide a statement on my potential as a teacher of freshmen writers and it hit me that I may, in a year from now, be finishing up my first semester as both a graduate student and a college teacher. Writing about my anticipated strengths and weaknesses as an instructor sparked something inside of me, something that had fallen asleep in the dark recesses of my mind where bright, excited thoughts once ran around without stopping. I might have the chance to influence eager (and some not so eager) student minds next year and that will only be the first step in my path towards becoming a professor and spending the rest of my life engaging students in both classroom discussions and their essays. I don’t want to get too excited about all of this because, heck, I might get 8 well written, stamp-signed rejection letters this March, but it feels good to be excited about the future again. It feels good to look forward to taking that next step.
In the tradition, started last year, of thinking about and planning for Winter Break well before its due date, I have come up with a list of books/tv shows/things to read/watch/accomplish over break. Hell yeah.
Books
American Gods – Neil Gaiman
A Game of Thrones – George R.R. Martin
A Clash of Kings – George R.R. Martin
A Storm of Swords – George R.R. Martin
And possibly the entirety of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. It’s always nice to dream, right?
Television
Buffy 1-7
Angel 3-5
Activities
Make my first vid, woo!
I’m going to, as my pal B says, keep pushing the ham through that keyhole, that is, keep writing.
Run run run run.
Chess chess chess.
Who can’t wait for all of this stuff? This guy, that’s who.
This from the new story:
Rhodes looked around the room and had to squint to see through the shafts of gray moonlight coming through her roof. Her cottage looked the same in the night as it did during the day: sparse, small, and haunted. It’s true that the ghosts were easier to see at night, having a silver, luminescent image works much better away from the sun, but were they all the time, floating along the ceiling, playing chess with bits of non-corporeal body parts on a board Rhodes had scratched into her only table, a small wooden thing. One ghost in particular, a tatterdemalion spirit of an old raider who had died in the hills nearby, sat just outside the door all day and night, alternating between guarding the home and posing riddles to the passing woodland creatures.
Rhodes again tried to yell out, this time with an intended target. Cavendish, the oldest ghost in the house, arguably the wisest ghost in the house, and definitely the most crotchety ghost in the house, was snoring quietly in the inner-apex of the roof, a thin drip of sparkling drool falling slowly from the corner of his barely-opened mouth. When her second attempt yielded similar results to the first, Rhodes began to panic, which is something that works especially well for the living because they can breath rapidly (and often hyperventilate, very good for panicking), flail their arms, run around in circles, talk or yell much too quickly for comprehension, and even let loose the full torrent of their bowels. All of these things are great for panicking and Rhodes could do exactly none of them. That’s not to say that she didn’t try and for just a second she thought she might still be able to wet the bed but it turned out it was just a bit of Cavendish’s drool that had fallen and, being essentially weightless and therefore at the whim of any stray air currents, landed on the bed.
In non-story related news, Winter, in his glittery splendor recently showed up in Morris. The night air now chills and tears at exposed skin and the light of the sun sets the mounds of powdery white stuff aflame. I associate the onset of winter in Morris to finishing finals and so, partially because of that and partially because I was finally able to hand in a huge assignment today, I spent the majority of tonight with a huge grin on my face. The downside to this wonderful feeling — finals aren’t finished yet. I still have considerable work to do on my grad. school applications, Woolf paper, and final paper for another class. The end is in sight, but still out of reach.
I visited the library in my hometown on Tuesday. My memories from that place are filled with the tales of Sherlock Holmes, the exploits of Dr. Doolittle, and the exciting adventures of Taran in Prydain. I used to bike to that deceptively small building every day during the summer, spending hours in those ridiculously blocky and utterly uncomfortable chairs diving into any tale I could find. Always, when I think of libraries, my mind wanders back to that simple, happy time and a little of the magic and mystery, that which hasn’t been killed by my recent hours of studying and essaying and homeworking, from childhood perceptions still twists and turns through my mind like a tendril of hazy fog, just out of reach but friendly with every other sense. I visited the library in my hometown on Tuesday and every one of those happy memories disappeared when one of the librarians, amongst the vulture-like chattering of her coworkers, answered her cell phone and proceeded to have a conversation that, I may be going out on a limb here, seemed to have never even met the words ‘emergency’ or ‘important.’ Ironically, the sign taped to the glass doors, through which a patron enters, reads something like “Please turn off all cell phones, pagers, etc…” Now, I assume this message is one made of politeness and civility for the other patrons present in the library, and as I sat in one of those chairs, you know, the uncomfortable, blocky ones, I could only sit and wonder what the hell had happened to my library.
Now, I realize I may have been spoiled. Perhaps my memory of my hometown library has been romanticized by Time and my idea of libraries these days is obviously heavily influenced by the UMM Library. True, the library here is often full of ebullient freshmen working in groups and making ribald statements with their “outside voices.” However, the 1st floor of the library is often totally quiet, as is the 3rd floor (although slightly less so), and I’m almost positive that Albus Dumbledore himself would avada kedavra anyone who more than sneezed on the 4th floor. But, the experience at my hometown library leaves me wondering if this kind of behavior in the library, the kind of disrespectful behavior that every movie I’ve ever seen involving libraries has attempted to subvert, (Shhhhh, this is a library), is running rampant everywhere these days. What happened to the dignity inherent in these halls of books? To where did the respect for learning and libraries go? Maybe this is an isolated incident and I am simply overreacting.
Yeah, I don’t think so. Even if this is the only instance of the idea behind a library being walked on, I still hate the idea of it happening. I’m certainly not advocating some sort of speaking ban in libraries but I do think the right (yeah, right) of patrons should be respected, the right to an escape from the emergency whistle and fire engine red world outside, the right to a quiet place of study, the right to a hushed environment of academic pursuit and imaginative tomfoolery. You are entitled to this and so am I and the only addendum is that neither one of us encroaches on the other’s library right. The library should be a place of learning, of intellectual adventure, of creative journeying, and librarians like Mrs. Cell Phone are killing those opportunities for growth and exploration.
I’ve been in a funk for awhile now. It’s been the can’t-focus, can’t-sleep, overly-stressed, slowly-dying kind of funk. My brain feels like a too small container filled with too much yogurt, slow moving and berry-filled. All of this grad. school crap coupled with the regular undergrad. crap, well, it’s a lot of poop and it’s everywhere. Half of the time I feel like what my mother would call a space cadet, that is, a person whose mind is off on his or her own planet. I used to be able to imagine the most vivid of scenes when I would go to bed, drifting off to sleepland was always a journey filled with thick, luscious forests and bizarre table-men but now I can only visit that happy place for a fraction of a moment before a hazy, grey (yes, I chose to spell that color that way) mist covers my imagination. I can’t focus, even on the fun stuff, and it sucks.
Well, today was funkless. I woke up, showered, and started planning out my hour-by-hour schedule, as I’ve done for awhile now. I was heading on through the noon hour with a solid 1.5 hour block of To The Lighthouse when I realized something, something simple that should have hit me full in the face a long time ago. I’ve been waking up every morning to plan out the things that I need to do and the real fact is this: I don’t have to do any of this. I don’t have to work on grad. school apps, I don’t have to read To The Lighthouse, and I certainly don’t need to memorize the conjugation of Italian verbs. I’ve always prided myself on a being a person who acts with excitement and passion, someone who strays from obligation in favor of being led by the heart. Yet here I am, waking up every day and planning out a schedule full of things without any sense of meaning or importance. So, I stopped. I put my pen down, closed my notebook, and thought about what I want. I want to go to grad. school and I want to be taking this Virginia Woolf class. I want to be doing the things that I’m doing but I’d forgotten that. My schedule didn’t really change any, I still planned out my hours the same way but I didn’t look at the list as a domineering overlord with a chagrined grimace and a dry whip. Finally, I’ve got my focus and my passion back, the things that I like most about myself, and all it took was the realization that all I have to do is nothing.
