the campus at dusk on another evening
Before I start, I want to set the stage, so to speak. Right now, I’m outside on the quad by my dorm, sitting on my (thankfully huge and dark-colored, therefore resistant to stains) blue Ikea towel, leaning against a huge tree (at least as many stories tall as my dorm is) with many heart-shaped leaves and letting the evening wind whisk over me. My friends who walk past keep asking me what I’m doing out here (it is admittedly rather brisk, and my fingers do not appreciate the lack of gloves), but it’s just such a lovely evening. The trees are all showing the pale underside of their leaves, and the tall prairie grasses planted around one of the buildings are bent nearly in half. Their movement in the wind really is like that of the ocean, just like all the books said. Across the street, you can see just one tree that has already turned, and it’s all orangey-glowy against the faded twilight colors. (Brief note: my incredibly sweet roommate just insisted on making and bringing down tea for me—aren’t I lucky??) And up above, past the tossing leaves and their monumental rushing sound, the clouds are moving so quickly that you can register their movement out of the corner of your eye—all grey and golden against the pale, pale blue.
Basically, it’s a gorgeous evening, the kind you want to share with the world, or at least with those you love best.
That one tree I mentioned, photographed at a different moment.
It turns out that I’m in love with fall. It really is fall now (I officially put away my fan a couple of days ago, thank goodness—my desk has suddenly expanded). I love the feeling of it, with all its gusty melancholy, and the trees that are slowly igniting. And the rain!! You all know how much I love rain (can I help it, being from Arizona, where the rain is both rarer (and more appreciated) and more beautiful than anywhere else?)The other morning I woke up to the sound of rain pattering outside my window, and convinced myself that I was dreaming. But I wasn’t, and I got to take the bus to the art museum in the rain, which was just about perfect (what better weather than rain for hanging out in an art museum?) Autumn is the perfect weather to be thinking and writing and dreaming in, although perhaps not always the perfect weather to be going to school in. It makes me want to run away to the river and write fantasy novels, or children’s books, not learn the International Phonetic Alphabet. I think this is the way the moors are supposed to feel. (I now have steamy mint tea to keep me company in the chilly dusk. Could this evening get better?)
the first fallen leaves of fall
What the moors don’t have, though, is excellent fashion. Not to be entirely ridiculous and shallow, but I love fall fashion! In particular, the hats (and the scarves). If you wear hats in the California fall (even when it’s cold enough!) you just look a little bit silly, like you’re trying too hard to be in New York City. But here, hats are sensible and adorable. The other day, I woke up cranky and tired (I’m not entirely sure why the cranky part, but I definitely know the reason for the exhaustion). I went to my first class, then returned to my room between classes, where I suddenly remembered about my hats. I pulled one on and suddenly my day was about four times better, just for the mere fact that I was wearing a hat and it was fall and I was so glad to be alive and not in high school. Then I did a happy dance around my room.
Speaking of happy dances, I want to address something important. I was talking to my lovely parents on the phone the other day, and my mom said something to the effect of, “It’s not that I’m not loving your blogs, but you don’t have to pretend to be happy all the time on them, you know.” Which was an incredibly sweet thing to say, but actually unnecessary. I really am this happy! Really truly! I mean, of course I have my bad evenings and my homesick moments, and my I-have-now-coughed-seven-times-during-this-lecture-and-I-am-so-incredibly-done-with-being-sick-and-at-college times, but most of the time I’m truly having an amazing time here. College is better than high school in every way imaginable—the people and the classes and the professors—and I am so glad to be experiencing it, even when I miss my home and family and friends. It’s weird, because college is different from anything else—it’s a place where we get to pretend to be adults (live on our own, manage our time, maybe have a job), but also get to still wear Halloween costumes and draw chalk pictures on the sidewalk and watch Disney movies on Friday evenings. It’s the perfect place to experience what being a teenager is about—the confused feeling of being both an adult and a child at the same moment. Of course there are people here who just want to drink and/or get laid, but the lucky thing is that they seem to be a minority. Most of us have chosen this tiny college with a terrible sports program and a love of community service and hard work that’s situated in the middle of freaking Minnesota (of all places) because we want to be surrounded by people like us—nerdy, passionate, and occasionally socially awkward kids who love to learn, at least about something.
Anyway, I’m extremely happy here, despite my original misgivings about this place (and this state!!). The people here really are so much nicer and more thoughtful as a group than I could have hoped for. On Friday evening, my theater class went to a play—a strange, contemporary play called Neighbors—at this little local theater. In the middle of the show, one of the actors collapsed…and didn’t get back up. The paramedics were called, the audience was rushed out of the theater, and no news was heard for the entire evening. It was a terrible experience. What made me feel better, though, even in the midst of my grief and fear and incredible longing for that man to be okay (I must have thought, “Please be okay, please be okay, please be okay” hundreds of times), was that my classmates were just as shaken and concerned and horrified. Saying that makes me sound so cruel, but I don’t mean that I was happy to see their sadness—I wanted to hold and comfort each of them, even while needing comforting myself—but I was so glad to be surrounded by people who felt so much empathy. In the last many, many years of schooling, hard situations have been made so much worse by the way my classmates have handled them, with jokes and inconsequentialities and so much irreverence. But my classmates here were all desperately worried, and I think every one of us cried, boys included. There was no attempt at brushing off the situation, or joking about the play, or even at leaving before everyone felt ready to go. We stood all in a circle, shoulders touching and arms around each other, and waited half-an-hour at least for news before deciding—as a group—that it was time to leave. And I appreciated so unfathomably much that they all cared with such depth. It’s something I’ve never experienced outside the bounds of my family before. (For those of you now worrying about the man, which I know many of you are, we found out the next morning that he’d had a cardiac arrest, but the paramedics saved him. My last news was that he was in the hospital, but stabilized—heart beating and lungs breathing without assistance. It seems that he’ll be okay in the long run.)
On a much more cheerful note, did you know that hedgehogs can be owned as pets??? This is apparently a THING! On the sign in my dorm that explains the dorm rules and regulations, there is a blurb about what pets are allowed. It says that small pets are allowed (if registered), including fish, hamsters, gerbils, and HEDGEHOGS!! Do you know how much I want a hedgehog now??
(I am now inside, wearing my mucklucks (whose only flaw is that I can never tell which is the left one and which is the right one until I put them [and sometimes even then] [and also that I always fall over when I try to put them on]), covered by a blanket, and waiting for my tea to steep because it got REALLY COLD outside once the sun set!)
And speaking of small mammals, I saw the most ridiculous thing the other evening. I’ve seen grey-brown squirrels and brown-grey squirrels, and been surprised and fascinated by black squirrels, but Saturday was the first time that I’ve ever seen a white squirrel. A white squirrel!! It looked like an escaped lab rat that had been out in the world long enough to visit a barber (as Aunt Meg always says, squirrels are just rats with good haircuts).
doesn’t it look WEIRD‽
(That, my friends, is an interrobang, which should be a thing but inconceivably isn’t (yet). I was told about it by the wonderful John Green (of the vlogbrothers and Nerdfighteria) and am now extremely enamored of it. So now I’m going to use it all the time in the hopes that my hard work will bring it to the fore-front of American literature. The interrobang is a brilliant combination, as you can see, of the exclamation point (apparently refered to as the “bang” by journalists of yore) and the question mark, and is used to replace the common “?!” for punctuation. Don’t you think it should exist‽)
Speaking now of John Green, I had a disheartening and encouraging experience the other day. I saw a video of the young (college-age) John Green the other day and, to tell the truth, he was a bit of a prat (don’t you just love British insults?). This was a great disappointment because John Green is a hero of mine and also my one true love (except he’s unfortunately much older than I am and happily married, but still), unless his brother Hank is (who is also too old and married. but less too old!) and of course one never likes to know that any of their heroes where kind of obnoxious when they were twenty (or even that they have any flaws at all—I mean, why can’t they just be perfect, damn it‽). But it was also encouraging, because now he is an incredibly thoughtful and intelligent and kind and excited-about-life kind of person and this gives me hope. See, college and (most especially) high school boys are a bit of a disappointment as a rule. They’re not passionate about life, not interested in having an intelligent girlfriend or girl friend, and almost never willing to admit to being kind and sensitive (relatives and friends excluded, of course!! you guys are all awesome!). But, if John Green used to be a little bit like this, then maybe there is hope for all of those annoying, college-age males out there! Maybe they will all grow up to be kind and thoughtful and interesting and interested adults. Maybe! I have hope!!
[I have become resigned to the fact that this will be an extremely scatterbrained blog. The thing is, I generally decide what to write on here by scrawling down notes about things that have happened that have excited me or interested me or made me laugh on a sticky note (or two. or three.). And then later I try to compile it into a series of stories that actually make sense together, while adding all sorts of things that I think of as I write. So I’m sorry guys, but that’s just kind of the way this is going to work. Hopefully it’s still giving you a good idea of my time here, despite its rather mixed up format. On to the next item on my tiny green sticky!]
Saturday was Constitution Day, which inexplicably passed without comment (except from my fantastic father, who is the only reason I actually know this). This is kind of one of my pet peeves.
What I’ve never understood is why we celebrate the 4th of July—the day we adopted the Declaration of Independence (not the day it was signed, the day we won the war and actually gained independence, or the day that we formed a government that would actually work)—with great lavishness and not the day that the Constitution was ratified at all. I know that the decision to declare independence was a difficultly-reached and monumental one (this is why I love the movie 1776, despite its terrible filming and cheesy directing decisions [now that is a movie that should be re-made, while Hollywood is busy not coming up with any original ideas!]), but I can’t believe that that decision was more important than the ones that led up to the creation of the Constitution, a document that was both unique and an incredible framework for the creation of a nation. Of course it has its flaws (as the authors knew it would—why do you think a plan for the creation and adoption of amendments was made (and used!) so early?), but it is also a set of amazing and revolutionary (both in the literal and figurative senses) ideas that has done a lot of good for this country, even as we’ve changed and modified it (This is one of the reasons that Time’s sensationalist cover of the constitution being shredded annoyed me so much; what people who claim that the Constitution is no longer applicable and important seem to forget is that so many of the changes that they point to have come into being because of the larger framework of ideals that is set out in the Constitution—many of our most unjust (why is it unjust when it’s also injustice?? this is a silly language) laws have been overthrown because of the messages inherent in the Constitution, even when those changes have had to become amendments in order to clarify their legality.). So why don’t we celebrate—or acknowledge it—at all? I don’t think that I’ll ever understand this, but at least I can celebrate it on its own. Thank you to those incredible people who wrote the Constitution, for creating a document that’s lasted nearly 250 years, while remaining flexible to change and improvement. Ahem. (I’m done now—sorry for the rant, guys.)
The other day, while my studious roommate was working on homework (and I should have been working on homework, as I should be now…), I started working on my P4A project. You all may have noticed me mention this and wondered what it is, so now I’m going to explain. P4A stands for “Project for Awesome,” which is a thing the vlogbrothers created (and now lead every year), where Nerdfighters around the world create videos highlighting their favorite charity (hopefully in action, but not is okay too) and then everyone watches and rates and comments on the videos made for this project, in the hope that these videos will all “take over the front page of YouTube” for one day. This year I’m planning on making a video, although not exactly for a specific charity. I’m making a video on blood donation, which is a highly important and useful, but under-appreciated and -publicized charitable action. And the plan is that this video will be in stop-motion animation. So, the other day, I watched a video on YouTube about how to make stop-motion videos and then began to experiment. I used my lovely tripod and remote and set up a little studio on my desk. It actually worked surprisingly well (I’d drawn a little man with detachable arms, which I was using), although there are still some kinks that need to be worked out. I’m looking forward to continuing this project (assuming I ever have any free time again).
The one project I have had time to work on is my on-going poetry-memorizing-project. This whole thing started when the evil Mr. Glavin had us memorize Ulysses (by Tennyson) for extra credit (this is the only good thing he did all year. ONLY! GOOD! THING!). I really loved the feeling of having that poem rattling around in my head when I wasn’t thinking about other things, so I started memorizing other poems, and eventually Clara and I decided to memorize poems together (we decide on a poem together and then both work on it, separately and apart). I currently have six poems jumbled together in my head, the most recent of which is not an acknowledged piece of poetry. It was written by Natalie Babbitt (an incredible children’s novelist), who is the author of The Search for Delicious (possibly my favorite book of all time, partly just for its craftsmanship). It’s intended to be a fragment of an old ballad in the story, but it reads and feels like a poem, so Clara and I decided to memorize it next. For those of you who don’t own The Search for Delicious, here it is (and for those of you who do and would like to read it in a real book, it’s on page sixty):
Two moons wander where the water curls,
Two white moons in a pair of skies—
Two moons yonder like a pair of pearls
There by the lake where the water swirls,
There where she sits with her wet green eyes,
There where she weeps and droops and sighs,
Poor Ardis where the water curls.
White starts shimmer in the mermaid’s tears,
Wet white stars on the sky’s dark sleeve—
White stars glimmer through the long, dark years,
Call down the words that she never hears,
Call to her there where the waters heave,
Call to her, “Ardis! Why do you grieve?”
No answer but the mermaid’s tears.
(I would like to brag and comment that I typed that up out of memory [and then checked it, just in case {there were no mistakes! even in punctuation!}]) Isn’t that a lovely poem? It sounds especially good said aloud, but I also love to have it meandering through my thoughts. My next project is Orpheus. Eurydice. Hermes., which is by the amazing Rilke. I’m already more than half-way through it, which is extremely exciting! That is one freaking long poem… Also! I wrote a brief quotation from the Babbitt poem (which I am henceforth going to just call Ardis) on the whiteboard on my dorm room door, and this is what it now looks like. My roommate is so awesome.
[The wind is gusting past my window right now the way it does past Mary’s in The Secret Garden. I’m sure it’s trying to tell me something important.]
One of the funny things about being here in Minnesota is finding out the things I’d always made assumptions about because of my background. A couple of days ago, I saw a poster explaining why Macalester is going bottled-water-free this year (although I just discovered, to my horror, that The Grille (a café attached to and run by the cafeteria, but open at different hours) sells bottled water…), and one of the things it said is that tap water is 4000 times cheaper (let that sink in for a moment) than bottled water. This stunned me, and perhaps it is one of those statistics that seem more shocking than they are (cheaper in what way—because of the production and environmental costs, or literally cheaper by the ounce?), but what I immediately thought—and couldn’t help but say aloud—was that this was a terribly worrying idea. When I said this out loud (admittedly a tad incoherently), my lunch companion gave me a puzzled look, so I tried to explain myself. I said that it was bad if the water was too cheap and she—completely misunderstanding me—said that she guessed that poor people could afford it better that way. So then I tried to explain that if it was too cheap people would use too much of it, and the idea of using too much water (at least to the extent that it has to be price-controlled) seemed to go right over her head. And then it struck me. This isn’t really an issue here. I mean, of course the general don’t-waste-water-‘cause-it’s-bad-if-you-do mentality is still here, but it doesn’t have the same urgency that I’m used to. And of course it makes sense—there’s a freaking huge river that runs past here, the famous ten thousand lakes, and not-infrequent rain, so drought isn’t really a problem. But Arizona cities, of course, aren’t really sustainable in the long run, and that’s because of a lack of water. And this issue is not only a big deal for me because I lived in Arizona for seventeen years, but because the places I visit the most (San Diego and Hillsdale) are also water-conscious. San Diego is not infrequently experiencing a drought (which is still something I have trouble understanding, even though I know why, because there’s a freaking massive bunch of water nearby!) and in Hillsdale, the water could (and has and will) run out at any moment, not because of a general lack, but because the well might run dry. So, to me, this is a huge issue—the kind you think about and worry about in your daily life (make sure the faucet isn’t dripping at all, make sure the toilet stopped running, don’t leave the shower on while you shave, stop the laundry machine when it explodes, etc., etc. and so forth)—but to the people I now interact with, it’s not such a big deal. I find that so interesting, and I’m not entirely sure why, although it might just be because it’s fun to contemplate the less-obvious (than religion and political opinion and view of cultures and…) differences location and upbringing can bring.
You may have been interested and/or startled when I mentioned the laundry machine exploding. Never fear, no one was harmed in the making of that joke, not even my beloved clothings. My best guess is that I loaded one of the machines a bit too full (not that they were very full at all!), because at one point it (and another machine) began spewing water out of their backs. The room was well on its way to becoming flooded (thank goodness for the drainage grate, though!) when I finally noticed, but I dashed over to the machines and opened them, thereby stopping the flow. After all of the water had disappeared down the grate, I tried again, but the water started again, so eventually I had to let one load finish while the other waited (with all my poor shirts floating in a big pool of water and thereby doubling my washing time). It was very irritating. This may be a sign that I shouldn’t wait to do my laundry for so long next time. It’s lucky I was there at all, though!!
You may now be wondering what on earth I was doing while waiting for my laundry to finish (besides saving the basement of my building from any need to build an arc), so I shall now tell you. I was feeling a tad melancholy and low, so I decided to watch the new Jane Eyre (which I've been wanting to see for a while) while supervising my laundry. It was excellent. I admittedly haven’t read Jane Eyre for a while (sophomore year? I think?), but I didn’t much like it when I did, nor did I really understand why it was considered to be such a wonderful love story. But this movie, which I enjoyed a great deal more than the book, made it seem incredibly romantic (despite the many strangenesses of Mr. Rochester and his situation). Mia Wasikowska, who played Jane, played the role perfectly, with the exact combination of plainness and beauty, common sense and magic, submissiveness and wry honesty. In the book, it seems extremely odd that Rochester would call her an imp or fairy, or a fantastical bird trapped in an ordinary cage, but Wasikowska seemed to be exactly that—this magical, sparkling creature inside a plain and subdued person. And the way she responded to Mr. Rochester and his various strange comments and questions was perfect—she seemed both to be his equal, and mock him a little, but also to be a good subordinate, not subversive at all. Sometimes there would be a sparkle in her eyes from some comment subtly at Rochester’s expense, but, when he remained silent, her face would close down again, and she would almost seem concerned that she had stepped over the line. She seemed to be incredibly his equal (and at times his better), and such a wonderfully deep character, all behind this plain, quiet façade. I’m rambling a bit, but she was incredible—and so subtle. And all of the filming was well done too, in dark tones and candlelight, with an appropriately unpleasant house, less like the unrealistic fairytale houses of usual period movies. The house looked cold and unwelcoming (and drafty and without amenities) as it should, and the lighting was shadowy and wavering, as would be true in a house of that era. I only had two problems with the film, both having to do with fire. The first was the scene where Rochester almost dies in the fire set by his wife, and this was odd because it was played far too calmly. There was no sense of impending doom as she walked through the house—no smoke or odd flickering light—, it seemed oddly invasive (and inappropriate for those times—a single woman, and only wearing a dressing gown!) when she first opened the door to Rochester’s room, and there was no sense of his imminent death when she first began to wake him. There was no urgency; even the music was calm and unhurried. I thought this was an odd decision, although it may have been intended to convey the dreamlike quality of the situation for Jane. My only other problem was a scene where Rochester starts a fire in one of the fireplaces. There is a pile of logs, with some small branches and twigs on top, and to these Rochester adds a single, lit match. And then (in seconds!!!) he has a lovely, crackling fire. And I am here to tell you (and Leslie could too!) that this is not what happens in this situation. No, you need maybe fifteen matches, and even then, the fire will probably burn itself out within several minutes. Harrumph. They probably used lighter fluid, which definitely didn’t exist at the time.
Today, I just had French lab, which is nice. I don’t think I did very well in class (I was feeling extra sick, and so congested that I could barely speak, and we had to do mini-presentations), but I really enjoyed it anyway, particularly because of what we did at the end of class. My lab instructor is a Parisienne from Algeria, so French is her native language (or at least one of them), and she’s still a little bit in the process of learning English (at least, so she claims—her English is truly excellent). Today I accidentally puzzled her when I asked her how one would say “displayed” in French (she’d never heard the word), but that (and her earlier appreciation of how one of my classmates pronounced Al Jazeera) made her decide to start a new thing. She decided to have a word of the day—a word in English for her and words in French for us—that was chosen because we like the way it’s pronounced in our non-native language. Her word today was “canoe”, which she absolutely loves to say in English. My word was “papillion,” which has been a favorite since the Professor (in The Last of the Really Great Whangdoodles) chose it for his favorite word. It just has such a lovely sound (and image and memory) associated with it.
I just want to end (this incredibly long post) with something one of my friends posted on Facebook. I’m stealing it from her, so I don’t know who said it first, but it’s a lovely thought: “Statistically, the probability of any one of us being here is so small that the mere fact of our existence should keep us all in a state of contented dazzlement.”
I love you all.
Don't forget to be contentedly dazzled. (Also awesome.)
