Can you tell I'm on the bus a lot?

This morning, I was surprised to see how crowded the bus arrived to my stop. I'm fairly close to the start of the line, and I've never had to stand for my morning commute. This morning I certainly didn't have to stand, but I didn't have my normal pick of seats.

I let the shift of the bus throw me into a two seater next to some girl, and immediately started the business of settling myself. I adjusted my bag on my lap, made sure my ipod was on a pleasing volume, and got my book out. I'm reading The New Kings of Nonfiction, a collection of essays edited by Ira Glass (hell no, it's not for class - in my dreams). A collection of essays makes for a great bus book, because of their length. Short stories are also ideal, and Marilynne Robinson's Gilead was bus magic.

Anyway, in my enjoyment of Malcolm Gladwell, I didn't bother to stare at my fellow bus patrons the way I normally do. I did notice a smug young man across from me, with a faux-hawk and fancy aviators, who I felt was looking a little more than usual. Usually I'd attribute this to my stunning beauty, but this was Monday morning. The girl next to me shifted, and suddenly I realized - we're wearing identical jackets.

I have this green jacket that isn't really my style. It was a gift from an aunt at Christmas, and I really do like it, even thought it's something I'd never pick. The jacket is a hunter green, and it's this cheap quilted polyester stuff. That makes it sound really offensive, but I promise it's not. Anyway, it's definitely cheap, and this girl next to me had on another incarnation of this cheap jacket. So I looked for further matchings: big purse? Check. Oversize sunglasses? Check.

The similarities stopped there, as she had on jeans and flats, and I black pants and boots. But I almost started to laugh anyway. Of all the empty seats on the bus (though there weren't a ton, there were certainly more than one), I sit next to this girl with a matching jacket.

We love the city because you never know what's coming. But on the bus in the mornings, I know what's coming: kids my age, with overpriced coffees and giant bags, making their way to work downtown. My neighborhood is just college with money. If an older person is riding the bus, they stick out immediately as an anomaly. It's funny the things you can learn before you're fully awake in the morning.

ps - Malcolm Gladwell rocks. And Emmy gets to meet him!!!!!!

Six words

School update: The collage I made, with the scissors and the glue and some provided construction paper, now hangs on my fridge. I showed it to everyone I could possibly show it to, and now I think it's going to start making its postal rounds. Hopefully not before I've scanned it and posted it on this blog. Putting pictures on my blog has not been an ambition of mine, as pictures are most certainly not my strong suit. But I fear this collage may be too good to pass up.

The essay class, on the other hand, has not brought as many smiles. On our first day of class, I had a few clashes with the professor, a man who has told our class that we haven't had enough "recreational experimentation," aka done enough drugs. Anyway, in our very first day of class, I was being my loud, opinionated self. I thought he was joking around, but then at the end he argued my point, and settled the argument by saying that I needed an attitude adjustment, and to perhaps have a drink before class. Hell, he didn't care, I could bring a drink TO class. As I had plans to do heavy drinking AFTER class, I simply shut up. I like him, but the man is a blowhard. Here's my least favorite part of the class - the text. This is an amazing point in time for nonfiction, but this guy has us using a text that came out over 10 years ago. I can't wrap my head around it. (Actually, I can: I think he wants to give us a historical appreciation for the maturation of the genre, but still, ick.) I think I'm back on the ins, though, because the other night, I was the only person in class who knew who Judith Martin was (Miss Manners).

And finally, one of my friends at school directed me to the following: http://www.boingboing.net/2008/02/14/sixword-memoirs-by-w.html

This (blog entry about a book that sprang from a magazine article) focuses on telling YOUR story (memoir, if you will) in six words. Apparently, Ernest Hemingway's shortest story was six words: "For sale: baby shoes, never worn."

Here are some from me:
Swimming head surfaces occasionally for air.
Wrinkled nose leads skinny life astray.
Loud-voiced; hungry girl seeks work. (this one also doubles as a homeless person sign.)

Make a girl happy and post your own six word memoir in the comments section...

Visitors in the Night

This morning, I woke up at about 5am because I thought my bed was moving. “That’s not possible,” I thought, but then it kept doing it... and doing it. It felt like someone underneath it had put his or her feet up and were moving them inches from side to side. So I figured out that there were only three explanations:

A ghost was under my bed, and shaking it around.
A rapist was under my bed, and shaking it around.
I was imagining the movement, or dreaming it.

After freaking out for a few minutes (ok, probably 20), I reasoned myself away from the rapist idea. Why would a rapist wait under my bed for hours after I'd already gone to sleep? I decided to go with the obvious reason (#1) and went back to sleep. I woke up thinking about it, but decided I wouldn’t tell anyone about my ghost because they’d think I was crazy. Then, I got to work, and a friend sent this link:

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/04/18/illinois.earthquake/index.html

This has been my first earthquake. In the warm light of day (alright, it's cloudy), it seems kinda cool that I could feel it all the way up here in the big city. Plus, this way, if I ever think there are ghost things going on in the middle of the night - something I'm not exceptionally prone to, but as I get older I realize you just never know - I can now blame those strange occurrences on earthquakes. Done and done.

Have a good weekend all!

The old Monday morning commute

Two things of interest on this morning's bus ride:

1. As of last Monday, the city set up my bus route with some nice new buses, replacing the stanky old ones. On these new models, there is a step up to get to the back of the bus, somehow creating more room. I don't know how they do it. Anyway, the shallow for this step is parallel with the first set of seats on the risen back part.

This morning, I sat in an aisle seat in this first row of the back. The girl next to me kept fiddling with her stuff, which is bus sign language for "Get up and move now, this is my stop." When we finally did come to her stop, I shuffled together my two bags and the book I'm reading (Marilynne Robinson's Gilead, which I highly recommend). I went to scoot out into the aisle to let her pass - her name was Jen, I saw it on her work ID badge - but neglected to account, spatially, for the sunken step and almost twisted my ankle right off.

"Ooops," I said in a high-pitched kind of way, as I scurried to get out of Jen's way so she didn't miss her stop. I think I clocked the woman across the aisle with one of my bags in my hurry, and amidst all this I giggled a little at myself and how ridiculous it was that I had almost fallen on that step. Unfortunately, I didn't notice anyone else laughing. If you want a little icing on this picture's cake, I was wearing mid-calf rubber wellington boots that are black with big white polka dots.

2. The second bus event happened after my little display of Monday morning grogginess. As I settled back into my seat, I noticed a man directly in my eye line. I noticed this man because he was playing with a pretty old model of a cell phone, and the phone was emitting a series of loud beeps. Due to the beeps, and his slightly disheveled appearance, I wrote him off as a bus kook.

The bus stopped, and a girl sitting next to the man got off the bus. I saw him ask the girl in the third seat a question, then jump up and yell at the driver so he could exit the bus at that stop. He hurried off, but didn't let go of the door and yelled, "Miss! You forgot your wallet!"

I looked down at his hand, and saw a wallet, then looked up at her surprised, thankful face. What a nice thing for him to do. He got back on the bus, and things continued as usual. If he hadn't done that, the best case scenario for that girl's wallet would have been getting turned in to the bus driver or something. That scenario seems unlikely to me. Almost as unlikely as some guy leaping off the bus to return someone's wallet. We'll see if that remains the highlight of my Monday.

Classes start back up tonight with "Text and Image," a combined section class which is both a writing class and a new media studies class. I got an email from the professor last night which requested that we bring a scissors and glue stick to tonight's class, if we had them. Apparently, I'm going to be responsible for designing things. Though many who know me are aware that I don't really like doing things I'm not good at, I guess grad school is about pushing one's boundaries. I'm actually getting more and more excited for this class as the day goes on. Tomorrow night I have a sure-fire winner: The Essay. A whole class, essays, and the infamous Prof Sirles, who referenced drug use during the MA in Writing Qualifying Exam earlier this winter.

Spring has sprung! And on Opening Day, no less...

The course of true love runs orange

Found this entry from a month ago. I guess I started it during finals and forgot about it.

Last night, I trudged home from the coffee shop in the dark, a little tired and a little cold, with a head full of rhetoric. I came to the weirdo intersection at the top of my block, and turned onto crooked Clark Street behind a couple, probably in their 50s. This couple was fairly nondescript, except for the one thing I noticed immediately - they had on the same coat. It was a grey coat, one of those deals with the protective outer layer and probably a fleece liner underneath. It had embellishments of orange and a dark blue covering the shoulders; and a detachable hood, which the woman was wearing and the man had apparently removed.

I walked right behind this couple, thinking several things: First, I thought that they were ridiculous (could they not go to the trouble of finding their own coats?), then I thought that I would never be caught dead in matching coats with anyone, then I wondered if they had the same size coat, then I wished I had a hood on my own coat, and so on etc. There were kids my age walking behind me, and I could hear the girl teasing her boyfriend and asking if he was going to get a peacoat that matched hers. I wrinkled my nose, and wanted to turn around and frown at them. Suddenly, I realized that the matching coats weren't offending me at all. Maybe I even liked the matching coats. Even now, I think of those two and it's nice. They didn't care how they looked, which is an anomaly these days.

So hooray for nerdy middle age. I don't know if I'd ever go so far as to have matching coats, but far be it from me to judge...

Is publishing your fiction in a blog the height of cheese?

Recently, I received this assignment:

A morbid piece of trivia inspired Robert Olen Butler’s Severance, his new book of stories. As Tom Barbash writes, Butler had learned that a “human head continues in a state of consciousness for one and a half minutes after decapitation. Having then determined…that in a ‘heightened state of emotion, we speak at the rate of 160 words per minute,’ Butler arrived at a new—and unlikely to be replicated—art form, the vignette of the severed head, told in exactly 240 words. 62 “talking heads” are at the center of Butler’s collection, including John the Baptist, a German woman who angered Hitler, and Nicole Brown Simpson, who catches a last glimpse of her husband. It appears O.J. is running for the end zone and, she says, “I can see what’s tucked there in the crook of his arm and it is me, it is my head, and I stare into my own eyes.”


For your Dead Head Vignette, select a figure from your cycle or invent a new one who will fit into your cycle and imagine his/her last thoughts in a heightened state of emotion and in exactly 240 words. How will this unique perspective shape your prose style? What do they see that sheds new light on the events in their world? A truly inventive title should begin the piece. Remember, this is YOUR work--be imaginative...did the person lose his or her head in a car crash, a climbing accident, a dream? Remember, exactly 240 words.

I chose Steve, the father of Sarah, a couple of people I wrote out just this week. I was having a little trouble figuring Steve out, so I thought this would be a good chance to figure out what his deal was. I think I got a start at least. If you like, read what I wrote below. Or... Write your own! It was pretty interesting to think about.

“The Door”

Shit…shit, I left the door unlocked. Sarah will kill me if – oh my god, I’m already dead. Is this what dead looks like? I wish someone would sew me… ew, there’s my body. That’s me, that’s my…why the FUCK did I want to rush for that stupid elevator? I couldn’t gotten the next one. Now Sarah will have no, oh god, what have I done? Her mother’s a drunk and now her dad DECAPITATED himself in an elevator? Who will take her? That fucking bastard Mike. I never… I wanted to, FUCK. How could he do that? How could I be so impotent? I deserve to die a horrible, ridiculous, impotent-man elevator death. Oh Sarah. If I could just catch the next elevator, God, I swear I’ll fix it. I’ll fix her and I’ll fix him, oh I’ll fix him right into prison. I want to make it right. I want to help my daughter. I want to have 25 minutes with Emily at the office, 15 sweaty minutes, it’s been so long and now I’m dying, basically a reborn virgin, but don’t say birth because this is its opposite… How did those doors do that? What the fuck kind of he-man elevators are those, anyway? Every day, I rode them (45 minutes, Emily, that’s all I wanted), and they seemed so innocuous, so innocent like my beautiful baby daughter, so sure and smart until he….

Politicking

I read the blog below this morning, and it strikes something that's been bothering me for awhile, so I decided to share it. Let me preface my introduction of it by saying that I still haven't decided which Democratic candidate I'm voting for in the primaries tomorrow (though, let's face it, Obama will more than likely win Illinois). It's been hard for me to decide, and so, in true Bethian fashion, I've put it off. I find both Clinton and Obama appealing in very different ways, but from the minimal reading I've done it looks like they have a lot in common, policy-wise.

However, my decision-making process has been hampered by an intense anger at "Hillary bashing." I hear from friends, or fellow students, or family members that Hillary is "evil," Hillary is "crazy." There is a flipping facebook group called "One Million Strong against Hillary Clinton" (or something similar, I can't remember). Last summer, when I saw that my old roommate had joined this group, I laid into him. "Why," I wanted to know, "must you hate someone? Can't you instead find some other candidate to support? What good will hating her accomplish?" Obviously, it's too late for such arguments in the world of televised ads and debates. Our system has made itself into a monster of criticism. Fine.

But here's my theory: Hillary Clinton is, above all else, a politician. She's smart, she's shrewd, and she's been in or around politics for a very long time. The public and the media attack her for a variety of behaviors, but aren't these simply the behaviors of male politicians which we've seen for years? Example: she is often called "calculating." I'd agree that "calculating" is not a flattering attribute. However, I also think that any politician around is going to be "calculating." Hillary Clinton is being attacked for normal politican behaviors because she's a woman. I think that deep down, we've all coached ourselves to believe that women aren't like that. And so it makes me angry. Please read (or skim, or whatever) the blurb below. Think it over. And don't forget to vote!

(Side note: perhaps H Clinton's behavior is doubly noticeable because she's running against a candidate who is so highly un-political, who presents an image of the idealist for the first time in a long time. Just a thought.)

http://fish.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/all-you-need-is-hate/