After (Part 3)

ONE DAY AFTER

Breakfasted on pumpkin bars and coffee. Care packages can soothe even the most troubled soul.

In an attempt to divert my mind from the ongoing zombie apocalypse and to occupy my time while I was confined to my room to avoid said zombies, I continued to work on my two-and-a-half-year plan. After much deliberation and frustration and confusion, I remembered that Macalester offers the option of designing one’s own major. So I’m going to try to do that! It’s based on the idea that I think the fields of art history and English are kind of artificially separated, so I’m going to try to design a major that combines the two. It requires a written proposal, a list of courses that would satisfy the major, and the support of three faculty members. I’m very excited about this possibility, but we’ll see where it goes.

 I also found the most perfect study abroad program that ever was: half of it is in Florence, where students study art history and Italian (although the classes are taught in English) and the other half is in London, where students study English and theater.  !!!!!!  It’s like it was invented for me!!

Finally posted the final piece of Charmaine and my Avengers bulletin board prank. This may seem flippant or even callous in the face of true possible world domination, but I thought it might lighten the mood.

The campus has become a gloomy place. Unfortunately, classes have not been canceled for the apocalypse, but indeed seem to continue at an even more frantic pace. Students hurry between buildings, large textbooks clutched protectively in front of them and often end up holed up in the library to avoid roommates they fear have been infected. I, too, spent the evening studying in the library, but I brought my roommate with me.

3 DAYS AFTER

Discovered today that I own rather a lot of scarves—but that doesn’t stop me from coveting MORE. I freaking love scarves. It would be much harder to cheerfully survive Minnesota winter without these glorious fuzzy portable hugs.

I see this drawing every time I walk to the bathroom in my dorm building and every time I am struck by the question, “What does it mean?!” Is the mention of “mittens” some sort of reference to Mitt Romney? Are the mittens a complicated commentary on the limitations of the presidency? Does it mean anything? Does life mean anything??

4 DAYS AFTER

Turned in my one-point perspective drawing today. I managed to get all the lines and angles right, I think! Probably should have spent more time on the relative darkness of the lines, though.

We also started two-point perspective today. It is the true bane of my existence.

Our poetry wall continues apace. Charmaine and I stayed up extremely late tonight talking about poetry and reading bits of Billy Collins and Pattiann Rogers to each other. I still cannot grasp the luck that got me this roommate from a three-question roommate questionnaire.

I also wanted to mention that the postcards that my lovely family has sent me are serving a higher purpose—decorating the walls of my dorm. So feel free to send postcards and you, too, can be a part of the Bigelow 365 Runes-Tschudi-Campbell room décor!

5 DAYS AFTER

Found myself trapped in the English department student lounge today, scavenging off free department bananas and coffee, as well as the orange I had fortuitously tucked into my backpack. I had a paper due that evening for my Harlem Renaissance class, so several other students with the same professor (one was from my class and the other was Emma) and I had a “Daylanne Essay Writing Party,” which mostly consisted of us eating a lot of food and then asking each other obscure grammatical questions.

 

Part way through our “party,” the English department student workers came in with the leftovers from some catered event. We devoured them with the speed of a thousand ravenous locusts.

Afterwards I went to a talk for my Visual Culture class on “memorial mania,” the idea that right now in America there is this semi-obsessive need to memorialize everything and to do so very rapidly. She also talked about the emotions that are societally permitted to be expressed in these monuments—patriotism, pride, grief, gratitude, anger, but rarely weakness or vulnerability. It was fascinating—clearly I need to read her book. It makes me think, though—what will be the decision with regards to the memorialization of those lost in the zombie apocalypse? Is it too early to be thinking of such things?

Received a care package in the mail today (after I’d fought my way to my SPO), as well as a fierce (if small) triceratops who may be able to protect Bigs 365 from the threat of zombies.

Hopefully she can help us keep our room infection-free. While I’m mentioning her, I figure it’s a good time to introduce you all to my menagerie of tiny animal companions.

6 DAYS AFTER

Made the possibly foolish decision to risk the streets this evening.

Charmaine has left town for the weekend to escape the zombie threat (and go to some convention, but that’s a secondary goal) and our room is nearly out of food. So I made the perilous journey to Whole Foods late in the evening to obtain cheese and pears, which I ate for dinner after my safe return.

Rather a different sort of dinner than the ones I’ve become used to during this time of crisis.

7 DAYS AFTER

Woke up this morning to heavy fog. Perhaps this is some sort of omen?  The end of the world may be closer than I’d believed.

Tried to cheer myself up with care package bagels and the remains of the previous evening’s scavenging trip. Was mostly successful.

By the afternoon the sun had come out and was setting on one of the most gorgeous fall days I’ve seen in a long time. Perhaps I was too hasty in my interpretation this morning—it is possible that today’s weather actually foretells a brighter future emerging from the hazy darkness of the possible apocalypse.

 

A random country and rock band spent the afternoon playing at the alumni house across the street.

Definitely not my favorite kind of music, but it was nice to have the music drifting in through my window.

Spent the evening at the veggie co-op being cooked for by Keo and talking to Sorcha. We had a delicious veggie curry and a salad for dinner and then made brown sugar cookies (basically sugar cookies but with brown sugar—a recipe we found on the internet) while talking about celebrity crushes, classes, and whether or not we plan to study abroad. Afterwards we walked back to our dorms all giggly and full of sugar. A lovely evening.

8 DAYS AFTER

Filled out my California mail-in ballot! Voting by mail-in ballot is bit of a melancholy business, what with the lack of the ritual of going into the booth. (Also the lack of a sticker. That is particularly depressing.) I kind of have the same relationship with this kind of voting as I do with blood donation—it feels like a vitally important responsibility to me, but while I’m doing it it rather sucks. And then about four hours afterwards I’m super cheerful and chatty about it.

But there was no way I was going to miss my very first presidential election, not even with the possibility that our nation will descend into zombie-ridden chaos and anarchy will rule hanging over my head.

9 DAYS AFTER

We started self-portraits today in drawing. I take it all back—THIS is the bane of my existence. I really could not get my face to look right. Luckily, these were just our practice in-class studies, but we’ll have to do another later. Damn it. I’m very embarrassed to show this to you, but since I’ve show all the others, I figure I should show this one too.

Noticed that everyone’s portraits (including mine) looked rather tired, but that few showed evidence of an oncoming zombie infection. Perhaps we’ll  make it through this crisis?

I spent the evening working on a group presentation and then watching the third presidential debate. I’ve listened to the first one and the VP debate on my iPod while working on drawing projects (not nearly as relaxing as the music I usually listen to), but I decided to go with Charmaine, Tori, and Keo to the showing of this one in one of our lecture halls. It cheered me up to have a group of people groaning, laughing, and shouting along with me instead of me just fuming quietly inside. I spent the debate talking to my friends, playing bingo about the Israel-Palestine conflict, and attempting to draw a portrait of Obama as practice for drawing class. I was not successful in the latter. These debates felt particularly frustrating, especially watching them from a campus so very invested in foreign policy—the supposed topic of the debates, but in actuality a very small percentage of the conversation. At the very end, when Romney finished with the line, “America is the hope of the earth,” my international student roommate involuntarily shot out of her seat and yelled, “WHAT??” at the screen.

Afterwards, we went back to our room and stayed up late talking about politics and foreign policy and the role of America in the world. This is something we’ve started doing more lately and I love it. It means I get a lot less sleep, but it’s such a gloriously collegiate thing to do.

10 DAYS AFTER

We spent today in C18 talking about A Modest Proposal and irony, which has been fantastic. I’m enjoying myself immensely. I think we can put that down on the list of “Reasons Why Lily Should Be an English Major.”

For Harlem Renaissance I had a presentation with a partner about Claude McKay’s Home to Harlem. I think it went well—my partner and I managed to lead the discussion for most of the class and the things we talked about were particularly fascinating that day. The only frustrating part was not being allowed to talk too much (since I was one of the people calling on the next speaker and I couldn’t be privileging my own ideas). I realized that it was basically like teaching a class would be, which was a nice revelation. I’ve wondered if I could actually do/enjoy a job that involved teaching, but after today, I think I could.

I spent the evening doing something unexpected and novel: phonebanking! That’s right, I am now one of those annoying people who calls you around dinner time to try to speak to you about political issues (and believe me, I now have so much more pity for them!!). I was doing it for MN United for All Families, which is the group opposing the MN marriage amendment that would define marriage as between one man and one woman. This is an issue that is really important to me, and I’m not voting in Minnesota, so I figured I’d try to do something about it. The phonebanking was happening at Hamline College, just north of us. I’d never visited the campus before, but it’s apparently very lovely.

It turns out phonebanking is about 75% boring, 20% frustrating, and 5% encouraging. I’d rather different percentages, but I hope we’re still making a difference. At the end, they insisted I take a free shirt. Upon trying it on at home, I discovered that it is literally big enough to wear as a dress. It nearly goes down to my knees! I haven’t had a shirt fit me this absurdly since I was six.

11 DAYS AFTER

Today in drawing, we started these massive (about 3 by 4 feet) mixed-media animal drawings. We can use any kind of charcoal and are required to use at least one form of liquid—water, ink, paint, etc. I decided to draw a jellyfish because they seemed less cheesy than other options and also they have really cool textures. They’re just generally awesome animals. We were supposed to begin the project only using powdered charcoal (which actually looked really cool).

And then we moved on to whatever media we wanted after about half an hour. I’m still not done, but this is already my favorite project we’ve worked on so far. It’s more free-form than the other projects and also requires less precision in a really satisfying way. I almost entirely used my hands as my drawing and painting tools, with the exception of the stick charcoal to add darkness (although I then used my fingers to change the texture of those lines).

This project is EXCELLENT.

After drawing class, I attempted to wash the charcoal and paint off of my body and then went to meet my friends in the English department for free waffles. We all sprawled in the hallway for several hours, getting in everyone’s way and eating lots of waffles while chatting. It was a glorious end to the afternoon.

When the waffle-maker was shut down, Keo, Rachel, Charmaine, and I trooped back to our room for an epic Pride and Prejudice marathon. We resolved to watch the entire BBC miniseries (with Colin Firth)—all six hours—in one go. Because we are absurd and awesome people, we ended up having loud and cheerful arguments about various parts/characters of the movie and about sexism in our era. We took a break after the first two episodes for food from Shish (I got hummus), where we ran into Sorcha. She decided to join us for the rest of the evening. Our viewing party went rapidly from primly seated in a semicircle to sprawled across the floor and each other, curled under blankets and cuddling bears.

Keo had to leave part of the way through, but then Emma joined us not much later. We were horrified to discover that she’s never read or seen Pride and Prejudice, at which we declared that she was still allowed to be our friend, but we weren’t sure she was allowed to be an English major. We descended into giddiness and hilarity after that, arguing about the possible Freudian nature of top hats, agreeing that male fashion of the 18^th century is very attractive, and laughing at some of the more unfortunate production choices (semi-transparent flashbacks layered over landscapes are never a good idea). It was silly and fun and ridiculous (and Charmaine and I got our very first noise warning) and one of the best evenings I’ve had in a while. At the end, Charmaine fell asleep and the rest of us made fun of the awkward end screen kiss.

Everyone has just trooped out, Charmaine’s already asleep again, and I’m ready to collapse into bed.

12 DAYS AFTER

I woke this morning to the first snow fall of the year!

Today is the beginning of fall break, something that all of us desperately need. Perhaps we will be able to weather the apocalypse now that we do not need to leave our dorms for classes. Food may still be a problem, though.

I spent the evening doing some more phonebanking with similar results. I talked to one man for nearly half an hour but was unable to sway him. Afterwards, I kept thinking of better arguments I could have used and wondering if someone else could have convinced him. When I mentioned this to Charmaine, we ended up staying up late to have a very frank but respectful conversation about our respective beliefs on this issue. Although I disagree with her very heartily, I’m glad we can have conversations like this about anything—even the things we will never really see eye-to-eye on.

13 DAYS AFTER

I slept in ridiculously late this morning and then went to Dunn Bros. for coffee and a pastry as a lovely breakfast.  I’m beginning to be cautiously hopeful that the end of the zombie apocalypse is near. Although campus is still oddly empty, I saw no zombies out and about during my rambling today. Perhaps there is hope!!

This evening I watched Robin Hood: Men in Tights with Charmaine and her friend Jack. That really is a completely silly movie.

14 DAYS AFTER

I’m posting the entirety of my story today. It appears that the worst of the apocalypse is over, and most of those who had caught the infection are cured. The future is looking brighter than ever! 

October 13 (The Beginning) (Part 2)

8:45 AM—Awoke and breakfasted.

9:30—Decided to create a four-year plan (or, rather, a two-and-a-half-year plan) to figure out the remaining classes I need/want to take and how those will fit in my schedule. Discovered that I want to take a lot of classes still at Macalester, and it’s going to be hard to fit all those in along with the requirements for both majors and the possibility of study abroad. Is it even possible to do all three??

3:00 PM—Began baking pumpkin bars. My sister, in her incredible wonderfulness, sent me a specially designed homemade mix as a consolation for the tragic demise of my beloved Coffee News. It is amazing how therapeutic and relaxing baking can be—and how much it can create a feeling of home even when you’re far away from your actual home.

Baking Photo Montage!!

I sat in the lounge kitchen (which for once did not smell like terrifying popcorn) watching them bake and enjoying the wafting smells of deliciousness while continuing to work on my college plan.

4:00—Thus commenced the Doty 4 Reunion Tea Party of Loveliness! Most of the awesome people from my floor last year reconvened in our room to have a silly tea gathering—Keo, Sorcha, Rachel, Tori, Lisa, Emma, Lizzy, Charmaine, and I. We drank lots of tea, ate lots of pumpkin bars, and talked about anything and everything.

Tea Party Photo Montage!!

5:15—Charmaine, Lisa, and I made the spontaneous decision to go see Next to Normal, a musical, because we discovered that there would be free tickets available at the theater before the show. This required some logistical maneuvering and figuring out the way Hourcar works.

6:30—We arrived in downtown Minneapolis for the show. While trying to find the theater (my navigators got us rather lost), we noticed several oddly dressed characters roaming the streets. They seemed to be covered in some sort of viscous red substance and walking with a strange stumbling limp. Some of them seemed to have oddly deadened eyes.

7:30—Next to Normal started. Everyone in it did an extremely good job both of singing and acting, but the show itself was very distressing. One of the people I went with described it as “emotionally battering,” which I think was accurate.

10:25—We left the theater after the show and suddenly the full weight of what we’d seen hit us. The people wandering around earlier were not just wearing costumes, but were indeed zombies. We fled the city in terror, afraid for our lives. The zombies covered the streets, thousands upon thousands roaming the city.

From Jennifer Juniper’s Myspace

I managed to escape to the freeway without hitting any zombies, despite the temptation. I argued that it wouldn’t matter if I hit them, as they were dead anyway, but my friends had some qualms.

10:45—Upon our return to the Macalester area, we struggled unsuccessfully with the Hourcar gas card and eventually had to return the car late, which rather sucked. This may seem like an unsubstantial woe in the face of the horrors our world is facing, but was oddly poignant at the time.

1:00 AM—Fell into an exhausted slumber, the possible end of the world hanging like a dark cloud over my sleep.

Before (Part 1)

When I left for college this year, I never imagined the chaos that would consume October of my sophomore year. For who could have anticipated the insanity, the danger, the terror? No one expects this to happen in their town, their college.

The apocalypse took all of us by surprise. It is not a mistake we are likely to make again.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Let me go back to the beginning:

13 DAYS BEFORE

Today, I finally got to watch the DW finale with Cassidy, Emily, and Charmaine. It started out good and scary, but ended up being kind of terrible. As in, poorly written and annoying. But it was fun watching it with my friends anyway, especially since Cassidy got all emotional and cried a bit and Charmaine screamed at all of the scary parts and they all made fun of me when I insisted that the creator was being self-referential and making allusions to Sherlock. They say I’m crazy and obsessed (and this may be true), but the same guy writes both and, really, he had to pick the year 221 B.C.?? (There were other moments of similarity, too.) Besides, I was just using my newly obtained visual culture training!

12 DAYS BEFORE

Started one-point perspective in Drawing today. The lecture was fascinating and really drove home to me how useful an understanding of the mechanics of creating art can be to a thorough art historical understanding of artworks. We looked at several churches and trompe-l'œil paintings that use one-point perspective to achieve their particular visual effects. We also looked at the ways in which the perspective point of the viewer (the one the artist has determined by their use of perspective, not the actual vantage point of the viewer in gallery or museum) can have its own powerful (and even controversial) meaning.

The drawing, on the other hand, was extremely difficult.  One point perspective is the bane of my existence.

11 DAYS BEFORE

Spent the last several days working on homework. Not much to tell. The autumn is beginning to be beautiful.

People seem a bit stressed—saw some pale faces in the cafeteria today.

Discovered that they’ve decorated the children’s section of the library with adorable wall decals. This cheered me up significantly.

Spent several hours talking to Clara today while swinging on the on-campus swing set. We discussed the beauty and incredible depth of good children’s literature and what it is that actually creates that divide between adult and children’s stories. Felt like a fitting location to have this discussion—a child’s play structure on a college campus.

When my fingers began to feel slightly brittle with cold, I said farewell and went inside to work on my charcoal drawing.

10 DAYS BEFORE

We had our first group critique for drawing today. I was pretty terrified, I must admit, but it went really well. It was actually helpful to have the other students talk to us about our work and rather nice to get compliments for parts we’d worked particularly hard on! Unfortunately, the critique also lasted all of three hours, so by the end we were all drained and nearly monosyllabic. I think the people whose works were looked at last got the short end of the stick there.

               

My friends mentioned that they needed a break, so in a possibly unconscious bid to escape the first presidential debate, Keo, Emma, and I went on a quest for non-Café Mac food. We ended up at this tiny Chinese restaurant which arguably had the nastiest Chinese food in the entire world. Imagine the worst of stereotypical Midwestern food attempting to disguise itself as Chinese. Yeah…

About halfway through Emma was already suggesting we find desert elsewhere so that we wouldn’t go hungry (although she was worried about time—she had lots of homework to do). Our fortune cookies ultimately decided us along this course of action: Keo’s said “be open to the suggestions of others,” Emma’s said “indulge in relaxation time,” and mine said “small acts of charity can go a long way,” which Emma and Keo naturally interpreted to mean that we should go find some chocolate cake and I should buy it. And that is exactly what we did. On the way to the cake, we discovered a community piano outside one of the shops, and Emma played a little for us.

7 DAYS BEFORE

Finished up the charcoal drawing of the pocket-watch and TARDIS mug. I think it turned out pretty well, although I admit that I could have spent more time on the perspective of that damn rectangular prism of a mug. Why did I pick something with such an obnoxious shape?

My peers seem increasingly wan and fatigued.

I watched an old Doctor Who episode with Charmaine and Emily tonight to make up for the fact that the current season is on hiatus. Charmaine was very adorable watching it for the first time and screamed at all the terrifying bits (and there are a lot in that episode). Afterwards we all went to the poetry slam and watched Cassidy perform at the open mic. She was pretty much amazing.

6 DAYS BEFORE

We had a fascinating discussion in C18 (as I will refer to my 18^th Century British Literature class for the purposes of brevity) about (of all things) reclaimed virgins and how this concept interacts with 18^th century understandings of personhood. It’s funny—our most invigorating discussions in that class usually end up involving some sort of extremely modern concept: superheroes, vampires, androids, etc.

I’m having more trouble being engaged in my Harlem Renaissance class, unfortunately, and I’m not entirely sure why. I think that partly I just think in a very different way from the rest of my class, so my ideas don’t always feel like they fit in the discussion.

5 DAYS BEFORE

Stayed up very late working on my paper for C18 on the subject of Pope’s Eloisa to Abelard. Had a midnight snack of tea [a drink] with jam and bread to lift my spirits and blood-sugar levels.

3 DAYS BEFORE

Had a guest lecturer in Visual Culture today on GIS and geovisualization. I thought this was a particularly brilliant idea on my professor’s part because I’d certainly never made the connection between visual culture and cartography. I really enjoyed looking at all of the examples she’d brought in, though, and discussing the ways in which visual cues convey meaning. Now I’m planning on taking her class for one of my social science requirements.

Spent the last two days of Drawing working on my one-point perspective drawing in class. We’re supposed to draw a scene inside either the Leonard Center (athletics) or the library. I am drawing a view through the doorway of the children’s section of the library. This should not come as a particular surprise to any of you.

My work was accompanied by the lovely sounds of Pandora, which I recently rediscovered and then downloaded as an app onto my phone. It is AWESOME even if the ads are annoying (I’d much rather hear about the John D. and Katherine T. MacArthur Foundation every five minutes than Jack-in-the-Box once, but c’est la vie). It’s been providing an appropriately collegiate indie rock soundtrack to my frantic essay writing and library-drawing.

Spent the afternoon working on my essay for Visual Culture, which is about the way Jacques-Louis David’s painting of Napoleon’s coronation (entitled The Coronation of the Emperor Napoleon and the Crowning of Empress Joséphine in Notre-Dame Cathedral on December 2, 1804—seriously, who gives a painting a title that is 20 words long??) acts as propaganda. I saw this painting in the Louvre when I visited with my parents years and years ago, and was amused by its occasionally dramatically ahistorical moments. I naturally remembered it when we were assigned to pick a piece of propaganda and am thoroughly enjoying researching it.

Read more Pope for C18 this evening. I have come up with a new theory about Professor Chudgar (a man who demands to be narrativized—so far I’ve speculated with classmates that the source of all of his magic is his beard (he is bald on top and furry on his chin—one of those philosopher-in-the wild-type beards) and with Clara that he is the adorably codependent brother of the cheese shop man (because clearly similar taste in hair style indicates genetic relationship)). I think that all of his classes are actually an attempt at Pope-washing. I say this because he assigned two of Alexander Pope’s poems for this class and three for Poetry last semester (and seems to have significant portions of all of them memorized) and this time around I…I’m enjoying them. *shudder* I’m ashamed to even type the words!

Really, though, I’ve been having a lot of fun with Pope lately. I even doodled poem-related cartoons in the margins of my Norton Anthology, although that might simply indicate that I read the poem very late at night after working nearly non-stop for sixteen hours and was therefore a bit loopy and excitable. Who knows?

2 DAYS BEFORE

Macalester is the kind of place where you might possibly happen upon a bagpiper serenading your entrance into a building for no discernible reason. The mournful sound of the lone bagpiper seemed a fit accompaniment to the grey morning and the tired faces around me.

(I later discovered that it was for the International Round Table, but this was NOT clear at the outset.)

Also discovered the most aesthetically pleasing way to display grapes. It was a momentous occasion.

ONE DAY BEFORE

Campus seemed oddly quiet today, although the parties tonight had an air of desperation. I wonder if there’s some sort of bug going around.

THE ZOMBIE APOCALYPSE HAS BEGUN!!

Photo from www.citypages.com

Due to the terrors of the Zombie Apocalypse, blog posting will not adhere to its regular schedule until the threat has passed. Evacuation and survival plans (usually created on late nights or at drunken parties) have been put into place and the surviving Macalester College students remain holed up in their dorms, scavenging off of Ramen noodles and dry cereal. The devastation here is particularly acute, since Mac students only want "a man who likes me for my brains" and tend to assume ripped clothing and pasty faces are merely alternative fashion choices. Hopefully those of us that remain human will survive until government aid reaches us. For those of you near the Midwest, I can only say this: if you see even a single zombie in your area, FLEE. THEY ARE COMING.

Blog posts will resume once a safe house is found. Until then, may the Force be with you and good luck. Remember: if it shuffles, shoot it.