Roger That

A couple friends and I sat down to study and write and decided to get our brains started by writing this. We rotated writing paragraphs: 

            Roger wasn’t a fan of Walkie-Talkies.  For reasons that would soon be known (though Roger would not be pleased to let his little traumatic incident involving Walkie-Talkies and the local haberdasher known to the public, he’s dead now—Roger, not the haberdasher), Roger tries to avoid Walkie-Talkies at all costs. But being a prison guard in a state penitentiary that wasn’t actually in the state of Hawaii, but was on a small island in the middle of the pacific--well, the Walkie-Talkie was his best friend.  It was his only friend. It’s little red light stared back at him as he lay on his cot, sweating and thinking  about how his dismal life had become a little less dismal with the introduction of that Walkie-Talkie.

            So when his son, Roger Junior, asked for the new “Ultra-Long-Distance-Rough-and-Tough-Walkie-Talkie” set (batteries and the urge to actually go outside for once not included) for his birthday, Roger said flat out, “no.” For weeks Roger was ostracized within his own house, his wife and son treated him like kids in the hallway treat a hall monitor, like he took all the fun out of life with one little word, “no.”

“Roger, he’s a kid. He asked for ONE thing for his birthday. He needs this!”

“No.”

“I can’t even believe you right now. You’re acting like… like a dictator.”

A warden. He was acting like a warden of a penitentiary, or at least that was how she was making him feel. He thought about this for a second. The warden, the Walkie-Talkie, it was all the same, and yet different. Now he was the Warden, his wife was the guard, and his son… the haberdasher himself: A wolf in sheep’s clothing (very well-made sheep’s clothing).

  With a sigh Roger said aloud “Enough of that kind of thinking, for now.”  Roger frequently spoke audibly to himself when no one was around, a product of his lonely, wardenly existence. This unfortunate habit was the root of the entire confounded haberdasher debacle. That and his inability to ever turn the Walkie-Talkie off (“Too many infernal buttons”)  Roger leaned deeply into his pillow and decided to contemplate the next day which would hopefully include chocolate cake.

The problem with thinking was that once you start doing it, it just isn’t going to stop doing it.  The human mind is one of those wonderful things; it will do whatever it wants to do, even when the person who happens to possess the mind has told it to stop. This was happening to Roger as he tried to not think about things. His mind told him to shut up and pay attention: Roger fell into the darkness of his mind, spiraling and coiling into the oblivion that is the human memory—where memories not only were stored, but fabricated. Roger landed with a thud onto a giant chocolate cake. 

“Cake? We’re having… cake?”

“Yes Roger! We’re celebrating!”

Celebrating, Roger thought. Since when does the Warden celebrate anything? Since when has there been anything to celebrate in a prison?

“I’m sorry sir, but what exactly are we celebrating?”

“Life, of course. I figured since we can’t have a birthday party for every prisoner on their birthdays we might as well just have one big birthday celebration a year for everyone!”

“Chocolate cake. Is that chocolate mousse frosting? With almonds on the trim?”

The Warden just laughed and turned back to talk to some of the prisoners.

Roger still couldn’t wrap his mind around what was going on. He scanned the room. All of the prisoners were laughing, smiling, enjoying their cake. No one seemed suspicious of the situation. Finally he spotted the haberdasher sitting in the corner at one of the tables, alone. He walked over to sit with him, both of them cake-less and word-less, until Roger noticed that the haberdasher had a black eye and he felt obligated to say, or at least think, something.

            “I’m sorry I blackened you eye, good sir…You understand how it couldn’t be helped after the, you know, thing.” The haberdasher did not raise his head or acknowledge Roger in the slightest. “Now, don’t hold a grudge, Haberdasher. You know I had to do it. I just had to…” He trailed off. The Haberdasher still did not alter his continuous gaze at the dark green table-top. Roger’s irritation swelled inside him like rising bread, “I’m just trying to help after all” he sort of yelled accidentally.  The haberdasher raised his grizzled head, staring directly into Roger’s face with his ghostly eyes and whispered “I’m not alive and neither are you. You know that, don’t you?”

Dead people were all the same. They were dead. Most people who die have the chance to come to terms with death before the scythe nips off their heads, but some, such as Roger his Walkie-Talkie, just couldn’t put up with the whole idea of it.

            “Dead?” he asked, his eyes were open wide, trying to absorb the information, but all they could do was wander off to a very slim piece of cake, which had just been set in front of him. He took up the cake and fork and was going to eat it when—

            “Don’t!” the haberdasher said.

            “Well, why not? It’s a perfectly good piece of cake.”

            But when Roger looked back down at his “perfectly good piece of cake” it had turned into a small man holding an umbrella. The man was in a very sporty suit. He smiled up from the plate, but when he spotted the fork that nearly maimed him, his expression became very serious.

            “Hey dad,” said the man in the suit. “Do you have my Walkie-Talkie?”

Roger woke with a start.  It took him a second to focus enough to realize where he was. His son was standing over him; he must have fallen asleep on the couch.

“Roger that.”

Make Time to Write

I need to make time to write. There is no question about it.
A writer should write, right?
Right.
Write.

As a reader I carry this burden of thousands of human trials, dilemmas, and troubles. The human condition is what I study. I read books; that's what I do. I read and then I analyze. I'm studying the human condition on a daily basis and it really is starting to conflict with my current status of being a human being. It's a harsh world out there, which I know because I've read so many accounts of it, but when's the last time something horrible happened to me? I'm not saying I wish something bad would happen to me, but is it odd that I have to spend so much of my time thinking about horrible things when I don't have to? Is that what it's like to just be an aware and intelligent person? Am I just ignoring the realities of my own life by jumping into other people's?

Here I am drawing a blank...

This is a poem I read this week for class by Leroi Jones (a beat poet of course):

"In Memory of Radio"  

Who has ever stopped to think of the divinity of Lamont Cranston?
(Only jack Kerouac, that I know of: & me.
The rest of you probably had on WCBS and Kate Smith,
Or something equally unattractive.)

What can I say?
It is better to have loved and lost
Than to put linoleum in your living rooms?

Am I a sage or something?
Mandrake's hypnotic gesture of the week?
(Remember, I do not have the healing powers of Oral Roberts...
I cannot, like F. J. Sheen, tell you how to get saved & rich!
I cannot even order you to the gaschamber satori like Hitler or Goddy Knight)

& love is an evil word.
Turn it backwards/see, see what I mean?
An evol word. & besides
who understands it?
I certainly wouldn't like to go out on that kind of limb.

Saturday mornings we listened to the Red Lantern & his undersea folk.
At 11, Let's Pretend/&we did/& I, the poet, still do. Thank God!

What was it he used to say (after the transformation when he was safe
& invisible & the unbelievers couldn't throw stones?) "Heh, heh, heh.
Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows."

O, yes he does
O, yes he does
An evil word it is,
This Love.


Isn't that the best poem you've ever read? Doesn't that make you just want to jump out of your skin and run around telling everyone to read it? I know that doesn't make any sense but I just like it so much. I want to write like that and I want people to like it and read it and frame it and recite it when they're sad. Is that too much to ask? Probably since I haven't written anything. If I expect to be inspired into writing I need to read things like this much, much more and I plan on it. I'm taking a class on the Beats this semester and I think if I can focus enough it will be very helpful.

On the start of my last fall semester...

      There was a time when I was hungry for knowledge, but now I just eat. I wanted to know what every word meant, but not just in context; I wanted to know the specific usage, what the word's original meaning was, and the connotation it held. I carried a dictionary around everywhere I went despite my shoulder hurting and looking silly when I looked up "metaphysical" for the umpteenth time just to make sure I really understood what it meant. I wanted to know everything.
      Sometimes I still get that feeling, like today when I spent more of my time at Sea World on my phone figuring out how closely related killer whales are to dolphins than actually watching Shamu. I want to know things and I want to explore and I don't want to JUST know things, I want to understand them in a way that just keeps leading to more questions that need to be answered because there's always more to explore! Yes! That is an exclamation point!
      In a whirlwind of indecision during the first week of school I dropped and added classes on the drop and add deadlines until the very last second and ended up with more classes than I wanted to take and more books to read than I probably am capable of. So now I have 5 English classes and a job. I know I'm in for a hell of a semester but I'm glad. I hope it ignites the kind of fire in me that I had when I was lugging that dictionary, fat from being overused and abused and stuffed with notecards, around with me everywhere.

Things I learned in College

Things I learned in College... that most people figured out in high school.

1. I love making lists:

      Shouldn't I have known this about myself a long time ago? Who knows. I read this book a few semesters ago for my Women in Lit class and one of the main characters makes lists because there's a famous Japanese woman from olden times who used to do it. I would love to have written a way more descriptive sentence than that but I am too lazy to look up or remember the details. The book was My Year of Meats and I highly recommend it especially if you're interested in corruption in the meat industry and/or feminism. Anyway I really like lists as a way of organizing thoughts and I appreciate the cheesiness factor that comes with them.

2. It's okay to fry your hair:

      When my friends and family were dyeing their hair different shades of black and blonde and red and straightening their hair until it begged for mercy right before it died slowly from the ends up, I was okay with my "natural" look. I never believed in hair dryers and to be honest I still am not their biggest fan. I never straightened my hair because I thought it would kill it and I usually had long wavy hair anyway. I never dyed it because my mom is obsessed with this idea that once you dye your hair you are basically walking the plank and can never get back to your natural color or grow it out. I really believed her for a long time, that me changing my hair was going to ruin everything and I would never forgive myself. Seriously though, who the hell cares? It's hair. It grows back and if it doesn't, that's cool, most of my friends are bald anyway. I've been bleaching parts of my hair to keep pink highlights for at least a year now and of course those parts are not very healthy but it doesn't really bother me. My hair isn't falling out and I just want to try other things with my hair anyway so why worry?

3. Alcohol is good:

      I don't know. This one kind of speaks for itself. I only drank a little in high school. I could probably count the number of parties I went to on one hand. I liked it but I still had this idea in my head that it corrupted people and changed them and would eat me alive if I let it. Then I realized that I am a perfectly capable human being and that fun doesn't kill people. I learned to enjoy myself. But...

4. Being healthy is better:

      Alcohol is really bad for your body. I live based on the notion that "I'm in college once, I'm going to do what I want,"so I don't hold back too much but I do try to respect what my body wants and not push it too far. My Year of Meats was also really great to push me into my ongoing experiment with vegetarianism. Look at that full circle ending I just pulled off. Better quit while I'm ahead...

Currently:

Currently ignoring:

- the fact that I have to leave for work in less than 9 hours.

- that I don't own a working Macbook charger

Currently obsessing over:

- how long it takes Mod Podge to dry, yet how much I love it.

- how disgusting the food most Americans consume is.

      I really ought to be asleep but instead I've been decorating my phone case and painting my nails and writing this blog and reading articles about healthy eating. I have actually been making real progress in my slow journey to becoming a vegan. I have been resisting my parents cooking, at least the meat part of it. I caved when we went out to Buffalo Wild Wings, but come on, I couldn't NOT have wings. I'm a horrible person for enabling myself but really, I have been getting better. I even bought vegan chicken nuggets to replace the just vegetarian ones I used to eat all the time (I'm going to miss them though). There are a lot of things wrong with my diet still but I am very impressed with my progress and some things that are controversial I actually don't have a problem with, such as soy. I have a higher-than-most-people intake of soy because of my weakness for imitation meat products and my love of tofu and my soy milk creamer. I am perfectly alright with that. There are some concerns about soy such as hormone problems which I have looked into and is pretty much bogus. What does concern me is that apparently it's processed differently in the United States and is less healthy because if it and I will look into that further but in the mean time I feel very healthy and have not heard anything to make me stop having my favorite tofu stir-fry every other day.

      I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I was planning on moving to Denver after I graduated and starting an awesome hipster, health-nut, active, nature-filled, badass life there with my best friends Sarah and Olive. Unfortunately that is no longer my plan. I might reconsider, but as it stands now, I just don't think I could bring myself to go there. The city of Denver apparently thinks that my best friend in the whole world is a vicious abomination that deserves to die and that it has the right to tell me what kind of dog I can own. Olive is a Pit Bull. She is also the most awesome dog in the entire world and the biggest cuddle monster and the love of my life. She doesn't have a vicious bone in her body. Also, I don't like being told what to do. So, screw you Denver. I can bring my bookshelf full of yard-sale-bought classics, my Mod Podge craft glue and glitter, my high-waisted skirts,  my adorable face, my awesome (human) best friend and her spectacularly short hair, and my beyond-amazing dog to some other city that we are welcome in. So suck on that Denver. Also, yes I do make decisions based on my dog. That's exactly the type of stubborn person I am and I'm okay with that. I don't sacrifice my happiness when I don't need to and I don't see any reason why I shouldn't choose my living arrangements based on where my dog will be allowed if I know that I like having her around. I probably shouldn't even be writing any of this since she ate my favorite shoes today so I'm going to stop now and go to bed.

And so I meditate...

And so I meditate...

               too much.

and my mind
((implodes))
into
"What does that mean?"
"How come?"
"Why do I?"
      "Why do I?"
            "Why do I?"

WHY DO I?

Or I quit.
Shut down.
   
      brain: off.

do
do
do.

worry later.

So now I think to myself

Ask then do?
Do then ask?
Ask and do?
Don't do, don't ask.

Or I could burn this page
and grow something new

             in
            the
          ashes.

Oh Joy!

Today I found out that I finally got a job. I was so ecstatic that I wrote this poem on post it notes.

The Further to the Side I Part My Hair, the Better I Look (and Other Myths About Myself)

Every once in a while I will get bored and part my hair on the opposite side for the day to switch things up, today was one of those days and it made me think to myself, why have I been parting my hair like this for so many years? I realized that the way I part my hair has been the same way for so long because I created this myth in my head that this is the only way it looks good which led me to wonder what other myths have I had about myself in the past that I realized weren't true?

1. The further to the side I part my hair, the better I look. It's a scientific fact that my beauty is directly correlated to the more asymmetrically my hair is parted. If I was to part my hair more towards the middle I would be a hideous old hag like something out of a disney movie (or my face would just look too thin). When I parted my hair to the opposite side today it ended up being a little more centered and I realized something amazing... I didn't look any different than usual. Not to mention, who the hell cares? So I'm moving on.

2. I am short. Actually, the average height of an adult woman in the United States is just shy of 5 feet and 4 inches. Coincidentally, I, too, am just shy of 5 feet and 4 inches tall. Weird, I've been told I'm short my whole life, and I have also claimed to be short and yet, I am almost exactly average height. I just happen to have been born into an immediate family that consists of slightly above average height people and became convinced that I was short. That, and I actually was shorter than most people when I was younger, I grew slowly.

3. I am bad at sports.
    Actually that one is true. I'm going to go ahead and blame not being pushed enough as a child.

4. Intelligence matters and I am smart! I can't stress this one enough. I seriously freak out when I think I'm not smart enough. It really should not matter to me at all. Instead of claiming to choose ignorance about certain things and then going home and being mad at myself for not being able to keep up a conversation, I really should just pick up a newspaper occasionally, pick up a book more than occasionally, write constantly, and learn non-stop. Intelligence can't be measured, and when it it, it's flawed, so I need to stop worrying about sounding stupid and start remembering what really matters. I should be a culturally-aware, self-aware, caring, educated, and unique human being, not the girl in the corner, mad about not being the smartest in the room.

5. I have fat legs. I figured I'd finish this list out with a solidly superficial finale. My legs and butt area may or may not be slightly bigger proportionally than the rest of me but to be honest it doesn't look bad on me and even if it does I kind of don't care. I'm fairly healthy and don't have a lot of excess body fat so I really don't care if I have a little extra junk in the trunk. To be honest though, I really don't. It's mostly just me being nit-picky about my own body since I'm pretty satisfied with it and then there's a grain of truth to the matter.

I don't know why I make up silly myths about myself. Maybe my parents told me Santa wasn't real a little too early and I had to make up other things to replace him. It doesn't really matter how it happened; what matters is that I stop making up insecurities when I get bored of being happy with myself.

I'm realizing more than ever lately that I simply am not taking as much advantage of my blog as I should be. I just don't know how I can fix that. I'd like to write all the time and update the world on my life but who wants to read bits and pieces from a college student's life when I have no goal or theme or plan in mind for the blog or my life. Usually I just feel like a lost feather floating down a creek not really knowing what's going on but being carried away anyway. After almost 21 years of living I still somehow haven't really learned how to steer. I've said how content I am with my life so many times lately that I started to question it. Am I seriously that content to just be here? I'm not exactly accomplishing anything but I mean I'm not exactly stagnant either. I'm almost done with my degree and I'm sort of working on what life will be like after college but I feel like I'm treading water.

I keep saying that I want to be a writer and I really do but I just don't do anything about it. I barely ever write, I refuse to edit anything, and I rarely ever manage to finish a story. Even if I continue to update the world on my progress, what is the end goal? Graduation? Moving away? Getting a job? Grad school? A publishing institute? A writing job? Being published? I'm not really sure. I've always focused on the journey and forgotten where I'm going but at this time of my life I think I ought to pay a bit more attention, especially if I expect other people to want to pay attention to my life.

In other news: Everyone I know is at Bonnaroo having what I assume is an amazing time without me. I'm not completely depressed about not being able to go because I never really expected to but it does make me a little sad to know how much fun is to be had that I am missing out on. On the bright side though, Mumford & Sons didn't cancel their plans to be played on the stereo in my apartment, I went to see Say Anything at House of Blues this week, and I went to a really cool information meeting to apply to volunteer with The Zebra Coalition. As the score stands now: Jamie - 3; Music Festivals - 54364375363263. At least I fought back right?

Also I'd like to comment on when sexism makes me happy. I'd like to say "never" but the truth is that sometimes it makes me feel like a total badass. Last night I went to a little party at a friend of mine's apartment where I was surrounded by men. The few girls that were there were mostly part of the group I brought. I learned to play a new game called Survivor flip cup, as in playing flip cup with Survivor rules. When your team loses, just like the TV show (minus the tiki torches), you vote someone off but you still have as many cups as you started with so you end up doing more work. Long story short, I played awesomely and ended up being the only one left on my team against the only person left on the other team and I completely smoked him. It felt awesome because I won a game, which is rare for me, but also because there were some comments about "being beat by a girl" which made me want to go on one of my usual feminist rants but instead I just basked in the increased glory.

One More Year

      You know in movies when someone gets possessed or switches bodies or something and they freeze up for a second and then you see something come out of their mouth like a little wisp of smoke? They have something crazy wrong with them and then after a creepy version of a burp everything is fine again and they hug their family and apologize because learned their lesson about whatever it is they did wrong. Well I think I just had one of those moments. I hope nothing alive came out of my mouth but if it's possible to feel like I just got metaphorically exorcised, then that's what happened.
       Lately I have been thinking differently. I remember junior year of high school I had a similar experience. I spent the whole year thinking non-stop about college and my future. Now, here I am, a junior again, a year away from graduating from college and I can't stop thinking about applying to summer publishing institutes and hoping I can save enough money to move to New York and make something of myself. I've spent a lot of my life dreaming about a husband and kids and a cookie-cutter house on a large plot of land and a couple of dogs and a cat and... well you get the idea, but something amazing has been happening lately: I'm not worried about that. I'm focused on graduation and I think I finally figured out what I want to do with my life and I've found a sense of peace from that that I haven't felt in a while.
      I was just sitting here watching Say Yes to the Dress and I felt a little chill and some tightness in my chest like I was upset, but I wasn't. I just exhaled and it was gone. I kind of want to change the channel. I know, I know, ridiculous right? So much has changed about me in the past few months but somehow I feel more myself than I have in a long, long time. I feel like I sort of know where I want to go but at the same time I'm not sure how I'm going to get there or if I'll change my mind. I just feel at home in the uncertainty. It might sound crazy but I really think that being a little lost on this giant planet is exactly what I need right now. Whether I'm ready or not, life is going to change in a year and I can either embrace the bumps and go for a ride or I can get stuck in the mud because I stalled out.

I've always had high self-esteem but what is my self-worth like? Are they even different? I think I have an ego that is slightly larger than most (or maybe I'm just comfortable with myself) but I don't know how much I think I'm worth. What I have learned in the last month or so is that just because someone else gave up on me doesn't mean that I should give up on myself. I don't know how it happened but at some point I started caring about the price tag that other people put on me and forgot that I decide my own worth. I may have been worth losing to one person but I'm stuck with myself so I can't treat myself like I'm worth losing. Of course I didn't get depressed and start thinking I'm horrible and ugly and despicable, but I had a few moments where I lost my footing and forgot where I was standing. I think the problem is that when you're a person like me who usually cares so little about how other people view me, when you start listening to one person their vote counts so much more. It's great that I've learned to care about how people feel about me but I should never let anyone's vote count more than my own.
It's amazing how much this realization has helped me accomplish. I have decided on a career path and I've already started taking the first few steps of my journey. I think when someone else gives up on you it is a lot more obvious because you get to see them do it but when you give up on yourself sometimes it's not so obvious. I don't think until this moment that I really ever thought about being sad or unmotivated as giving up on myself but that is exactly what I did. I can't believe that I let someone else make me feel like I'm unworthy but I betrayed myself even worse when I treated myself that way too. I guess the moral of the story is "one man's trash is another man's treasure." I doubt that I am as bad as trash to anyone (fingers crossed) but at times I've felt like I just got tossed to the side like a candy wrapper. For some reason, feeling like a candy wrapper has more of a lasting effect on me than when someone thinks I'm worth my weight in gold. I just have to shrug that wrapper feeling off my shoulder and keep on walking because I have so much to offer the world. I can't wait to start a new chapter of my life where I focus on my aspirations and how to embrace my talents instead of just thinking I seem great but have little worth.
This probably isn't the most organized or poetic my thoughts have ever been but I haven't felt this calm in a while and I am happy to write it all down, as sloppy and melodramatic as it seems. I missed my blog and I missed caring about my writing. I missed seeing my future clearly and I missed working hard for it.