Schwasted Babies

I guess I'm taking a risk here by posting this, because I know that pretty much the only people reading this blog are my family members - the vast majority of whom are not going to be pleased to read about this particular incident.
This behavior is not common for me, and, due to what happened, I am unlikely to repeat it.  However, it did yield a pretty darn good essay, and I am in college.

This essay is a humanist essay, which means that I take an experience of mine, and broaden my view and talk about something greater than myself.  Since this is kind of how my mind works anyways, it was not hard for me and I think I did very well, and I am proud of this piece.  If it is stolen, I will cause bodily harm to the thief.

Enjoy!

Pins in a Butterfly

 

            7:00, the morning—I don’t feel hung-over, I feel great.  Compared to how I was last night, almost anything would be an improvement.  I slept on someone else’s couch with my boots on.  My fake-eyelashes are gone—I wonder if anyone will find them.  Damn, I liked those eyelashes.  After ten minutes of trying to mentally re-trace my steps through the dreamy haze of drunkenness, I have gained nothing.

 

            “Your eyelashes are coming off,” says the guy I kind-of know.  Did I pull them off?  Throw them on the floor?  Surely, I didn’t think to put them in my purse.  He is smiling hugely, freckled face twisted up at the mouth.  I have no memory of what happened to the lashes.  Start where the dream begins to make sense.  The next thing I remember is us kissing.

            It is an interesting thing, remembering reality like it’s a dream.  I don’t remember how we wound up kissing—my memory just starts off right in the middle of it.  Later that day, when I got back to my dorm, I would write down what I remembered and try to reconstruct the night. 

            Time was no longer my measuring tool—it doesn’t fit in this reality.  I remember things as happening before or after other things.  People coming and leaving, getting another drink, kissing the guy I didn’t know, kissing the guy I did know, and then vomiting miserably.  I had managed to stitch together the order of events, but they could have occurred over a time of an hour or five hours. 

            I always thought that was a cliché—it could have been a moment or an eternity—but it turned out to be very true.  The monotonous procession of minutes just doesn’t cut it.  Time, or the perception of it, is more fluid than that.  It doesn’t always go by in a series of tiny moments that make up a night—it can turn around and loop in on itself, or just disappear completely.

            Attaching a number to an event holds it down, like the tiny pin stuck through the body of a butterfly in a glass case.  It’s a way to de-mystify it—the ticking of minutes is a way to define the little windows through which we look at the world.  We can quantify reality by saying this happened then for this amount of numbers, and it is now this amount of numbers behind us—safely behind us so that we may forget it.

            7:20—I want to go back to my dorm, and I have the capability to make it there without a problem.  I want to thank these people—their goodwill is remarkable.  What I really want to do is write a thank-you note and leave it on the couch, but I can’t find a pen.  I don’t want to intrude so far as to tell someone I’m going.  A note would be perfect, romantic even.  But I can’t find anything to write on—the lid of that empty pizza box, maybe, but I still need a pen.

            In my search, I come across the cooking pot that I had held in my lap only a few hours prior.  Only hours?  It looks so foreign without my stomach acid inside it.  Someone had washed it.  I feel guilty and embarrassed—I want to leave, like an overdone actress with a Transatlantic accent—“Oh, I can’t stay here another minute!”  A minute was the time it took for any of this apartment’s natural occupants to leave their rooms, come into this one, and to discover me.

            I decided not to leave a note, and hoped that my shabby attempt at folding the blankets they had gotten me would do.  I hoped my gratitude would show.  As quietly as possible, I gather my purse and put on my coat, and go down the stairs.

            It’s so cold out that I want to turn right back around and go inside.  This is where I’d like to fast forward time—to where I have food in my stomach and am in pajamas in a real bed.  I’d just like to skip over this whole bitter-cold part of my day. 

            In a way, I do make it fast forward.  Even though it took no fewer minutes to walk back, it seemed much shorter than it could have been.  Happiness, enjoyment, shaves seconds off those minutes, so that when I finally arrive at my dorm, I’d be content to just keep walking.  It was a beautiful morning.  Time flies when you’re having fun—another cliché, another truth.

            12:00—the closest dining hall to me opens.  I need food.  A few hours ago, I was so hungry I got nauseous.  That’s a stupid feature of the human body.  I couldn’t bring myself to eat more than half a banana.  Had I been foraging in the wild, hungry but nauseous, I wouldn’t have lasted very long.  There’s another thing about time—how our bodies, our minds—the things that make us what we are, come from a different time. 

            Humanity lives in a little bubble that is ahead of what we were made for.  We are advanced—moving ever towards some obscure goal that we call “the future”.  It will be wonderful when our world gets there, but it is some distance away.  The future starts now, some slogans say, but as soon as I hear the spokesman’s generic voice, I feel no different.  I see no Utopian society out my window.  I see ancient things, I see nature outside my window.

            To a squirrel, years don’t matter.  Whether it’s 1853 or 2053, gathering nuts for the winter is just as important.  Or what of the giant redwoods, trees older than Christianity?  Do they count their growth rings like days on a calendar—tick, tick, tick?

            Time is a human invention, thought up to quantify our lives—to take the abstract, the unknowable, and make it mundane.  Humans seek to define everything, to capture ideas and phenomena with words.  Words can make things safe and bring them down to a level that our brains can understand.  Maybe that’s why I like to write.

            The taste of orange juice in the dining hall is like the taste of vomit.  It had been washed from my mouth early in the morning, but the taste was still fresh.  It’s the acidity—the unmistakable taste of orange juice that is from concentrate.  Our senses conjure up things that have long passed out of our memory.  Like the smell of the clementine tree in a Floridian backyard, something my conscious mind would never remember, but that still surfaces whenever I smell clementines.

            I am still embarrassed of my drunkenness, and the sight of the guy-that-I-know that I kissed makes me duck my head and look away.  There’s nothing I can do about it—it’s in the past.  I can’t undo my actions, he should know that too.  When I think about what happened, it feels like I could have just as easily dreamed it, but I know that it happened.  For however long before I started vomiting, I was living in a dream.

            1:00—back in my room.  I will get nothing done all day, the creeping feeling of sickness follows me everywhere.  There is nothing specific I can point out that is wrong with me, I just feel off.

            I can’t stop thinking about what happened, so I get out a notebook and a pen.  Reconstruction of Last Night I title the page, and then get to work.  The ink rolls over the paper—I am being perfectly human—trying to quantify what has happened to me.

            I am seeking to understand, to pin down like a butterfly, how an unfathomable thing works.  For all my grand thoughts and ideas, I am still an animal.  My mind only wants to see things that it can either understand, or quantify so that it doesn’t feel threatened anymore.  Despite the potential for more reality bending nights and the insights they may yield, I don’t want to repeat the incident again.  I am content to tick by the numbers as they pass.

 All things considered, that night could have been a LOT worse.  For example, no one drew on me

 this did not happen

 neither did this

 or this

 this is just funny

So is this. 

 Now I want to cuddle a baby, too bad no one has one handy.  Ever noticed how they smell funny?  Anyways, I'm done with this post, have a nice day!

 Sorry, I couldn't resist that one...okay I'm really done now. Bye!

 

I'm Awesome (in Auschwitz...)

Woah, so many exciting pageviews since I post a link here on my facebook!  this is kind of how I feel about it.

 Bam.  Posing like a boss  

Except this is actually me .....lol sadness...

So anyways, I'm really proud of this essay I did, and I had better get an A+... A++. Yeah. Don't steal this, and enjoy!

 for your brain

 

In my reading of Tadeusz Borowski’s This Way for the Gas, Ladies and Gentlemen, there were two scenes that lingered in my mind long after I finished reading.  Not—as one may suspect—scenes of particularly unique carnage, but scenes of beauty and humanity.  Borowski’s story is an exploration into the deepest parts of human nature.  The two scenes examined here serve as illumination in that darkness.  They contrast with the inhuman cruelty of the death camp, and are ideals of humanity.

            “‘You mustn’t shoot, I’ll carry them.’  A tall, grey-haired woman takes the little corpses out of my hands and for an instant gazes straight into my eyes.

            ‘My poor boy,’ she whispers and smiles at me.  Then she walks away, staggering along the path.” (158)

 

            Though it is only a few sentences, this tiny exchange is incredibly powerful.  For the reader, it is like a little light shining through the horrible darkness that is the rest of the piece.  For the story, this is a beacon of compassion that stands out so sharply and is made all the brighter by the atrocity of the camp.

            The grey-haired woman pities the narrator.  She sees that he has lost a large part of himself—his humanity.  His ability to feel compassion for another human is severely lacking.  It wouldn’t be so extraordinary if she’d met him on the streets somewhere, but the fact that she is compassionate towards a worker of Auschwitz, who holds dead infants “like chickens”, who is a perpetrator of her own inevitable murder, is inhuman—or rather, superhuman (157).

            She is the embodiment of human compassion.  She can rise above her horrible situation and surroundings, to retain her humanity.  The grey-haired woman is the only one to step forward and carry the dead children, so what she represents—the ability to still be human while under the influence of the camp—is very rare as well.

            Clearly, the vast majority of people under the influence the camp have lost their compassion as well.  It is no surprise then, that the narrator has succumbed to this lack of humanity, it’s expected, even.  Why is the compassion of the grey-haired woman so powerful?—because we do not expect it.

            The second moment of brilliance in the story is when the narrator encounters “the girl” (160).  Her part in the story is considerably longer than the other woman’s, and that suggests that the narrator spent more time thinking about her—he certainly spent more time describing her.  She is portrayed in slow motion with the narrator telling us her every move, like one of the stereotypical love-at-first-sight movie scenes.  She “suddenly…appears” and “descends lightly…hops on to the gravel, looks around inquiringly”, throws her “soft, blonde hair” back “runs her hands down her blouse” and “straightens her skirt” (160).  No other character in the story is described this fully.

            The narrator describes her with words like “delicate”, “boldly”, “beautiful”, “enchanting”, “wise”, and “mature”(160).  Quite clearly, this girl, though she is in physically in the narrator’s life only a few moments, she has had a very strong impression on him.  He describes her with a tone very like adoration. 

            Just like the grey-haired woman represents the compassion that the narrator has lost, this girl is the embodiment of the honor and bravery that he no longer has.  She speaks to him directly—without fear—despite her very fearful situation.  When he makes no response, she asks him again, persisting.  ‘Listen, tell me,’ she says, demanding of him (160). 

            The girl makes the awful connection herself, and decides her own fate.  She doesn’t doubt her guesses about her destination—she speaks with “proud contempt” (160).  Even when someone directly presents her with the opportunity to continue living—albeit, only for a short time—she refuses, choses to go to the gas chambers instead; she is in control of herself. 

            This is another ideal of human nature—the virtues of honor and integrity.  This girl will not allow herself to become one of the “dirty, damp female bodies” of the concentration camp—she would rather die (160).  When she is face to face with her own death—a place where the majority of people would sacrifice their integrity without a second thought—she does not give in.

            If the narrator possessed this quality, he would have refused to continue his job as soon as something went afoul of his morals, instead of twisting or eliminating his morals so that he could survive in Auschwitz.  I think he sees this remarkable quality in the girl, and that is why she has such a lasting impact.  That is why he speaks of her so highly.

            These two women contrast sharply with the narrator because they are exemplary and he is not.  They stand above the animalistic mass, and he is part of it.  Without these two scenes, the story would simply be an account of a concentration camp.  Without that contrast, it would be flat and meaningless.  Just like shadows in a painting help support the lighted objects, so too do bits of light—of illumination—help to expose the shadows.  The shadows here, of course, are the darker recesses of human nature—of animal nature—that are thrust to the surface in the face of atrocity.

Talking a Walk....with Sheldon

Written for Intro to the Essay, focusing on the use of figurative language, (aka fancy writing).  No stealies!

 

 

I’m walking down the slushy road.  The air is frigid.  It’s the kind of chill that only the early morning has.  The blood vessels of my skin are contracting, fighting against the air.  At another time, in a different situation, I’d be miserable.

            But on this walk, I feel good—happy—grateful to be alive and walking around at a time when campus is still and silence rules the air.

            To my left, a small stream runs in the ditch beside the road.  I slow down to look at it.  It’s like a diamond that had been cast aside.  I feel like I am discovering it—maybe I am.  Maybe no one else has taken notice of this bit of water before.  I want to drink from it—my mouth is dry.  It looks like liquid crystal.  It looks clean.  It would be cold and refreshing.

            There are patches of snow that the stream flows under.  I wonder what it would be like to be in that stream, and to flow inside a tunnel of snow.  I could forget all the troubles in my life, all the things I had to do, things that were somehow more important than this little stream.

            But it was cold, and life does not work that way—I went on, back inside, to a world of closed curtains where beautiful water doesn’t flow freely across the earth.

Also, Happy Valentine's Day! 
 what a lovely card...too bad I found it on Google and no one gave it to me.



Bye bye lovelies, I'll be spending the rest of my day writing and writing and writing homework.

 

Sleepytime in the Twilight Zone

An exciting little essay thing about what happens to me when I'm sleepy. Guess what time I wrote it? I'm really starting to like this kind of nonfiction. It has a real potential to be funny, which is exciting. Steal-me-not! Enjoy, my lovelies!

When my eyelids get heavy, and my head droops like an under-watered flower, all I want to do is snuggle with someone and take a nap. This usually winds up with me alone in my dorm room in the middle of the day, with the curtains drawn, cradling an oversized teddy bear—taking a nap.

Sometimes my brain shuts off, totally and completely, and my hands spend maybe an hour hunting through stands of my hair for split ends. They work in tandem with my glassy eyes to purge my head of the deformities.

When I am tired, I shamble around and drag my feet. I forget things, like what I was doing a minute or so before. My eyelids are half-closed and I look like I’m high. I’m not though, I promise, that’s just how I get sometimes. Not‘high’, just ‘loopy’.

I yawn a lot too—big, satisfying yawns that make my eyes water. On the school bus in high school, which I got up at 5:30 for, I would work up enough good yawns so that a tear or two would leak out.

In between yawns, I’d close my eyes, and my neck muscles would stop working. My head would fall, maybe an inch, but enough to jolt me to my senses, if only for a bit. This phenomenon also occurred during classes, most prominently during math classes. Not even Mr. Merritt, young, funny, and handsome, who worked a side job as a fitness coach, could keep me awake all the time. Pre-Calc, though, was the absolute worst. That teacher was as nice as they come, but desperately boring. It was in that class that one of my friends took pity on me and let me know that when my head was down on my desk—even though I was actually listening—my eyelids would flutter and make it look like I was having some sort of seizure. I would try to listen, and then I’d find myself racing along in some half-awake dream land.

Sometimes, when I’m reading, I fall asleep. I don’t do it on purpose, but when it’s an AP Economics textbook, I just can’t help it. Somewhere, at my old school, some unfortunate kid is reading out of a book that I’ve used as a pillow—and also drooled on. I try to prop my head up with my hand, but after a while that hurts my wrist, so I lay on my stomach with the book propped up in front of me, and that hurts my chin—I roll over and try hold the book over my head, and that doesn’t last long. So, finally, I lay my head on the book itself, read the page opposite my “pillow”, and by that point falling asleep is inevitable.

So is drooling—it’s a fact of having to breathe through your mouth which, incidentally, produces drool.

Being genuinely deprived of sleep with an essay to write, a recent addition to my adventures in sleeplessness, is miserable—especially when your attention span has dwindled down to roughly that of an excitable Chihuahua. My eyes burn and skitter around the computer screen, soaking in the unhealthy glow. Then, I convince myself that I should watch an old episode of The Twilight Zone, because that’s how my brain recharges itself. After all, I can only focus for forty-five minutes—it’s science or something. I try to finish off the essay with something intelligent, like a snappy concluding sentence:

That approach to writing sounds kind of lame for a Writing major, but I’ve done it more than once, in The Twilight Zone.

Exctiement!

I get to write an article for Kitsch Magazine!



I know riiiight?  How exciting!

Okay, but on a seriouser notw, I have some work to do now, and I'll get back to it, but I just wanted to share my wonderful excitement!