"For West is where we all plan to go someday..."

(2 days to freedom, 2 days to freedom, 2 DAYS TO FREEDOMMM)

It may have come to your attention that my life has rapidly descended into mania and Olympic-worthy procrastination. Luckily, I’m escaping this insane Macalester life in COUNT THEM two days for Thanksgiving break of awesome HUZZAH! I adore my friends and will miss them (even you, creeper Katrina who is reading this right now), but can’t wait to not be here for a little while. YIKES it’s been a long semester. PLUS I GET TO SEE SO MANY AWESOME PEOPLE!

Anyways, this last week has been a bit crazy (THROUGH NO FAULT OF MY OWN (that’s a lie)) and there’s plenty more crazy to come—I have a paper due Monday, a second draft of one due Tuesday, and a proposal for one due tonight at eight o’clock. Eek! So this shall be a bit of a brief blog before I go on to work on all of those crazy things that I should be working on. Or maybe I’ll use this as a break between projects.

I wrote that several days ago, as you might guess. On Sunday, to be specific. Now it’s Tuesday night (I’M FREEEEEEEE) and I’m sitting in the Denver airport staring out the big windows at the rush of airport vehicles and waiting for my second flight. It’s cold and everyone seems exhausted and I needed a break from my book and the melancholy airport-in-winter-evenings feeling, so I decided to actually write up this blog.

School work lately has been relatively uninteresting, with the exception of several massive projects. In the last few days I’ve turned two paper proposals of varying lengths, three (four?) study abroad forms, a draft of a final paper, and a fifteen-page paper on Yoko Ono’s Cut Piece. Plus readings, of course.

I also planned (and started) an art project for my feminist visual culture class, but more on that later.

Anyway, point is that the interesting things in my life lately have been entirely about hanging out with my friends, who are lovely and wonderful.

Wednesday I went to go see Gravity with Charmaine and Katrina, which was…..an experience. Clara had recommended it because of the way it deals with bodies and because it’s main character is a woman (rare in sci-fi). And (I can hear you protesting this, Clara) she warned me that it was going to be very scary, but I hadn’t quite taken into account how scary it would be.

First, some background. Throughout my life, the things that have always seemed the most terrifying to me have been situations in which breathing becomes a problem (and reliance on human ability has no chance of saving you). So, basically, space and deep sea. The idea of being in a submarine or space ship/shuttle/station is horrifying. (I got over the usual little kid wish to be an astronaut very young.) And, of course, Gravity is a movie about an astronaut who gets stranded in space with everything going wrong that could possibly go wrong.

I showed great restraint in not actually injuring my friends’ hands, although I did squeeze Charmaine’s hand so hard I cramped my wrist. Oops.

Beyond that, though, it was a pretty incredible movie. Bad dialogue, unfortunately, and George Clooney’s character was pretty uninspiring. But otherwise, it was visually gorgeous, very interestingly crazy, and crafted Sandra Bullock’s female astronaut as a kind of primordial archetypal human (like you might find in mythology). I plan to write my final paper for Texts and Power about that, actually. It should be exciting.

Anyway, I’m really glad I saw it, but it was also one of the more frightening experiences I’ve had. Ugh. Space. *shudder*

Then, on Saturday, I really intended to write my blog (since I knew otherwise I wouldn’t really have time until today) but instead I had a glorious day of hedonism and procrastination with Charmaine and Katrina.* We watched some more Firefly (including my absolutely favorite episode—HUZZAH!) and then went off to watch Doctor Who. As many of you know (since you saw that AMAZING Google doodle), Saturday was the release of the 50^th anniversary episode of Doctor Who, which started in 1963 (although it hasn’t been on the air for all of that time). My friends and I went to join a bunch of other Mac Whovians who had co-opted the student lounge television to watch the episode. And it was really fun watching it with everyone (especially since we all had watched enough of the show to get all of the silly references to earlier episodes), but unfortunately Katrina, Charmaine, and I all ended up really hating the episode. I mean, it had some really cute moments, but it also re-wrote about ten years of the show’s history. Grrrrr.

We went back to the dorm to eat our feelings via RA-provided-pancakes-and-Nutella and then “worked” for a little while before giving up and deciding to re-watch Up. Those Pixar people should show Moffat how storytelling should be done. We all got teary and ridiculous over that movie—which continues to be impressive, beautiful, and entirely adorable—and then actually went to sleep at a semi-decent hour. Which was impressive of us.

Sunday was spent in Cahoots (although this time it was Charmaine’s fault, I swear—she dragged me there!) and then in the library as I finished up my paper on Ono. It was actually kind of nice, despite the lost sleep—it’s kind of fun to do to the whole staying-up-late college student thing if you’re managing to be productive and also create work that you’re proud of. It was very cold, though, which makes walking back from the library rather less nice. Before I’d left for the library, Katrina tried to get me to stay by playing “Baby, It’s Cold Outside” on repeat as I gathered my things. Unfortunately, her “lifelong sorrow” probably wouldn’t be a feasible reason to ask for an extension form my professor.

[On that note: it has gotten terrifyingly cold these last few days and I’ve been wearing my super-special über-winter-coat-of-awesome. It’s very cuddly and nice, except that when I’m wearing it my knees get very jealous of my torso. They have requested that I obtain a leg-version of the coat.]

(we've gotten snow only twice this year--this was the second time)

Monday was a morass of fatigue, stressing about packing, and trying to be productive about planning for finals week/projects. Last Monday, Joanna suddenly brought back to life a project thought long dead—our feminist activist art project. She hasn’t brought it up since the beginning of the year (and it’s not on the syllabus), so we all assumed it had ceased to be a thing. But NO! Anyway, she suddenly wanted us to have coherent plans for the project, which required some quick thinking. This Monday I met with her to talk about it—my plan is to create posters to put around campus that (hopefully pithily) explain why we still need feminism.

After my meeting, I met up with Rachel to spend the evening working—I meant to finish all my readings for Tuesday, etc., but I was so accidentally focused on the art project that I ended up accidentally spending several hours on that. I made three posters, though, so that’s cool. And this morning (Tuesday) I managed to finish up my readings before class, so that worked out just fine. I just got very little sleep (again).

After classes, I immediately gathered my things and set off for the bus stop, where I nearly froze to death waiting for the (very late) bus and then light rail. I am not exaggerating when I tell you that it took more than an hour for me to regain all feeling in my legs and feet. Brrrrrr. Then I made my way through the (surprisingly empty) airport and on to my first plane.

I almost never fly at nighttime, and when I do it’s always been into Phoenix (or during international flights, but you can’t see anything on those flights—you’re too high up and possibly over the Atlantic ocean). Phoenix at night is a circuit-board—perfectly squared, brightly lit, and massive, with chords of light snaking away from it as you fly away from the city itself.

Tonight, though, I’ve flown out of one city and into another (so far) in the darkness and I was rather naively amazed to see how different it looked. Denver is like spilled salt—piles and scattered whorls across the back tabletop of the flatlands. It’s haphazard and sprinkled and lovely.

But it was St. Paul that really caught me. As we first rose out of the cities, we were leaving behind a mass of gold and silver lights that glittered—actually glittered—as we moved, individual ones blinking in and out as they passed behind trees. And the light was so much less harsh than it is in Phoenix, softened by the shadows and the moisture in the air. Amongst the lights there were swoops and dots of pure black (water, I assume), sometimes with a light or two spreading out into them. And as we got farther and farther from the cities, the lights began to move farther and farther apart until they looked like stars across the sky, with occasional heaps of light here and there. It was shockingly beautiful.

(A note: sorry for my unusual sentimentality/poeticalness—I’m very tired and feeling rather melancholy as I pause in my reading to write this. I’ve been working my way through The Book Thief for the last several hours and my heart hurts, not just because it’s achingly sad, but also because it is beautiful and funny and sweet and kind and lovely. I’m not quite done with it yet, but I’m already in love.)

Anyway, now it’s time for my to board my last plane and head off to San Diego. It will be so lovely to see all my lovely family people and get many hugs (especially after the emotional walloping that is The Book Thief). I send all my love to those of you I won’t get to see this weekend (I can give the rest of you my love in person) and hope you all have marvelous Thanksgiving celebrations. I am so thankful for all of you.

<3

(pretty stair shadow)

*I say this, but it’s kind of a lie. Katrina NEVER procrastinates—it’s very impressive. If I were her, I’d have already finished all of my final homework assignments and would have nothing to do. She regularly complains of boredom, in fact. *sigh* I’ve decided—as a consolation to myself—that she has a time-turner. It’s the only explanation for how she has time to have jobs, do all her homework, get plenty of sleep (and by plenty I mean sometimes eleven hours and rarely less than nine), and still have time to watch TV, read books, and listen to the entirety of Welcome to Night Vale. IT MUST BE A TIME-TURNER—the alternatives are too shameful.

(Shameful for me, that is.)

P.S. I just spent the last forty minutes of my life on an airplane high above either Arizona or Nevada weeping my heart out over The Book Thief. I have cried this hard over a very few other stories in the course of my life:

1. a production of George Bernard Shaw’s Saint Joan

2. Fiddler on the Roof, specifically the scene where he refuses to acknowledge his daughter

3. the parts of Titanic in which the (annoying, poorly written) main characters are absent but the ship is going down

4. and now The Book Thief

I am in awe—a book that could have been so deeply clichéd and hackneyed (it’s a book about the Holocaust narrated by Death) was instead truly moving, gorgeous, and altogether incredible. I kind of want to start going around to my fellow passengers and recommending this book, like a door-to-door salesman or something.

Wow.

P.P.S. Obviously I am posting this on Wednesday--I meant to post it last night but was too sleepy to figure out the internet connection at the hotel. Oops!

P.P.P.S. My title is from a lovely quotation by Robert Penn Warren that I am using for no particular reason except that it is pretty and also I am currently in the west:

"For West is where we all plan to go some day. It is where you go when the land gives out and the old-field pines encroach. It is where you go when you get the letter saying: Flee, all is discovered. It is where you go when you look down at the blade in your hand and the blood on it. It is where you go when you are told that you are a bubble on the tide of empire."

 (blueeee and warrmmmmm and sunny San Diego)