you did what for how many jellybeans?!

I'm working in pretty much the most empty lab on campus and have seen all of two people the past three hours and Dashboard's Stolen is running on loop in my head and even though I have Alexander McCall Smith in my bag ("the literary equivalent of herbal tea and a cozy fire") I can't help but watch the clock, one second after the other.

A long Friday, to say the least.

Though I have spent a little more time with Matt + K, two kiwi characters I keep messing about with. I have no idea what they're doing, where they're going, or why. I didn't even give them names. But now Kaila speaks French and Matt's into Biology and apparently there's a Nell amid their friendship who I have yet to actually meet. Remember? How your writing teachers always warned you that you really had no control over your characters? When Bird by Bird predicted that plotline you never knew existed until it was nearly over? Those authors that laugh about the stories that waltz on in, uninvited, to every page-party you throw? Yeah, never believed it. Totally skeptical, actually. And then it happened to me.

And not just with these kiwis. Another page hosts Peter's thoughts, and after that comes a three-page dialogue between imagined friends labeled only "girl" and "girl two." The very first page of my ramblings opens with some unidentified boy who wears the same sweater he always wears. Or so it says.

Sometimes, this is incredibly cool. Most often, it's obnoxious. Aren't I supposed to have some idea of what I'm doing? Shouldn't I be allowed the smallest bit of control? My characters---my characters? Can I call them that?---quite literally make themselves at home in my words, pushing sentences about as necessary, kicking entire paragraphs out of the way, and rearranging episodes to their convenience. Yesterday I tried to talk K into a rugby game, but she'd have absolutely none of that. "Nell's there," she told me, one eyebrow raised. I scooted her toward the sideline, annoyed. "Are you kidding?" she asked. "Do you know anything? I said Nell! Nell!" She waved her arms then, rolled her eyes to fully acknowledge my idiocy, and stalked off. I closed the document in retaliation, swearing her off for an entire weekend.

And then, with today's minute hand nudging past the hour's half in an empty room, I got a little lonely. Just a visit, I told myself. Only a minute. I checked up with Peter first; the boy was fast asleep, just as I left him. On page fourteen Emily was deep in conversation with her sister, offering me a cup of tea with a wave of her hand. And Kaila? Just as obstinate as ever. I stared her down a paragraph or two, finally giving up with a sigh. Tomorrow, I thought, moving the cursor to the close. But I couldn't do it. The story's still open.

Right now, I'm just glad for the company.

: : : : : : : : : : :

We caught up with Daniel, Jenna, Johno and Hamish only ten minutes later; Jenna’d tripped a tree root and was insisting she’d broken an ankle to a doubtful Johno. Hamish looked mildly concerned from his perch on a low-slung tree branch, but Daniel was a good three meters down the trail, pretending to be patient.

“It’s not broken, Jenna. Honestly,” Johno said as we reached the clearing.

“Oh yeah? Whose ankle is this, John? Yours? No. Did you hear the crack? Are you feeling the pain? I don’t think so. Where’s Matt? He knows these things better than you. He’ll know. Matt? Matt?” Jenna was in one of her moods. She’ll take mountains for men anytime, but factor in the early rising and she’s not all fun.

“It’s not broken,” Matt said, standing over her. “Can you stand?” Jenna nodded, annoyed. “Good. Here, hand me your pack—yep, that’s right. Okay, is that weight better?” She nodded again. “Great, let’s go. Two more hours into this and we’ll only have three more hours to go!”

Jenna held onto my shoulder for support, limping a few paces before finding her rhythm. “Five more hours,” she whisper-laughed. “That boy’s no help at all.” I snorted, agreeing. Matt was completely in his element, and I certainly wasn’t going to play the kill-joy. He walked several strides ahead of us, joining Daniel with a punch to the shoulder. One arm swung exaggeratedly at his side, the other bent at the elbow and up around the straps of the two backpacks he was now carrying. He looked excited, a little sad. By tomorrow we’d be back in school, a long weekend of wilderness laid to rest. Give us a few more weeks, however, and we were done with school for good. The sudden acknowledgment of the fact caught me off-guard; I must’ve gasped out loud, because Jenna squeezed my shoulder. “You all right, K?” I nodded, repositioning my pack with a shrug. We both looked back to the boys, the four of them now laughing wildly at some joke—at Matt’s expense, most likely. I smiled when my suspicion was confirmed; Matt had turned around to roll his eyes at me, walking backwards a few paces before rejoining the laughter.

life lessons

Yes, they're pretty; sure, it's spring. But please, whatever your little green thumbs do, don't let them plant Bradford Pear trees. They smell like rancid Fancy Feast. While I do miss Mr. Knightley (my own dear fancy feline), I do not need to be reminded of his morning dish on every campus corner.

Whose idea was this? And are we going to suppose it's merely coincidence that these trees stink up the sidewalks outside both the business and the science sections of campus?

edward, don't lick max

In a very "that was so last season" moment, I saw Penelope a few nights ago on a whim; the film was at my Dollar Theatre and with one final night free from yet another semester of school, I took the chance for a last huzzah. And what a huzzah it was.

I wasn't expecting anything more than a pig-nosed Christina Ricci (so maybe such ambivalence is the key to my post-viewing raptures), but Penelope is a dashing mix of Amelie color and Tim Burton whimsy that I fell head-over-toes for. Her bedroom alone is worth the ticket and the two hours; a glorious palette of deep sages and muted golds, a collection of nature's offerings that any botanist might envy, a swing fit for a fairy queen strung up right smack-dab in the middle of the honeyed space. Outside of her sumptuous sanctuary, the story moves in some sort of suspended reality, pairing top of the line security cameras with ancient typewriters, retro Atlantic City neons with modern cityscapes, and a punked-out Reese Witherspoon to contrast Penelope's antique femininity. Never entirely sure how to locate yourself in a world where British accents run into American dialect unexplained, Penelope envelopes the audience in a whirl of fairytale reminiscent of a beloved childhood daydream.

While, yes, the dialogue doesn't quite keep up with the visuals, this film deserves so much more love than it ever received. Penelope's wide-eyed inner beauty is perfect family fare, a princess tale among the best of them. The minute it's out on DVD, it's on my shelf. And I rarely, if ever, make such a purchase. But Penelope? She's worth every penny.

{Oh, did I mention James McAvoy? As if his smile alone isn't reason enough . . . Go. See. Love.}

la poesia

Nearing the end of my BritLit final this afternoon, I reached the multiple choice section only to be told that I should enter my answers on the Scranton. It took me a minute to rearrange the letters to Scantron, but the damage was done. I marked a, b, c, and d to the tune of The Office theme, and it doesn't help that my professor looks remarkably like Pam Beesley.

Then (logically, of course) I spent the next ten minutes wondering whose idea it was to put cacti along the Testing Center windowsills.

But that is beside the point (no, really?). What this post is really about, besides being a rather convenient way to procrastinate my exam preparations, is Italian poetry. Because I fell in love with this simple little poem by Margherita Guidacci and felt the need to share. So here it is, first in Italian, and then translated as well as I could try:

La conchiglia

Non a te appartengo, sebbene nel cavo
della tua mano ora riposi, viandante;
né alla sabbia da cui mi raccogliesti
e dove giacqui lungamente, prima
che al tuo sguardo si offrisse la mia fortuna mirabile.
Io compagna d'agili pesci e d'alghe
ebbi vita dal grembo delle libere onde.
E non odio ne oblio ma l'amara tempesta me ne divise.
Perciò i duole in me l'antica patria e rimormora
assiduamente e né sospira la mia anima marina,
mentre tu reggi il mio segreto sulla tua palma
e stupito vi pieghi il tuo orecchio straniero.

: : : : : : : : : : :

The Seashell

I do not belong to you, though in the hollow
of your hand I now rest, wayfarer;
neither do I belong to the sand from which you collected me,
and where I have lain long, before
I ever offered my good luck to your gaze.
I am partner of the nimble fish and the algae,
I had life in the womb of the free waves.
And neither hate nor oblivion but the bitter storm divides me.
That is why you find in me the ache of the ancient homeland
and the painstaking murmurings and the sigh of my sea-soul,
while you hold my secret in your palm
and, astonished, turn it to your foreign ear.

I love this poem for---surprise---several reasons, the first of which is setting (because Poems of the Sea take up a good portion of my bookshelf and they sing of summers at T-Street and Tahunanui sunsets and the steely beauty of Punakaiki) and the second, words. It doesn't quite translate to the English, but you don't have to know a lick of Italian to get the feel of something like the murmur of rimormora or the lilt of assonance in la mia anima marina. The shout-out to mirabile helps too, of course.

But my favorite bit of all is the seashell's longing voice, the cry for home and family. I like the loneliness of being stranded on a foreign shore, only to be picked up and picked through by a stranger and flung back to the rough sand. And I like knowing (if my childhood observations prove accurate) that the sea will eventually come to claim her, and pull her home.

white heron, red herring

Last night, in all of the five hours of sleep I managed before my seven a.m. American Lit final, I dreamt of Sarah Orne Jewett's little Sylvy in her short story A White Heron. The June sun filtered through dark pine boughs at the close of another summer day, the girl's bare feet maneuvered the shadowy trail in expert confidence. She searched for Mistress Mooly, the stubborn old cow hiding away in the huckleberry bushes. I watched the tale quietly, a shadow behind the adventure---occasionally analyzing the situation as Dr. Matthews would have us do, intent on catching supreme moments of regional realism and the borderlines of a domestic sphere. And, as one is wont to do on nights marking the hours before a big event, I woke frequently at intervals, checking my clock in the blind panic that I'd miss my exam. And every time I'd open my eyes with the same name beating alongside my heart: Sarah Orne Jewett. Sarah Orne Jewett.

One would think that could be a clear sign of things to come in the morning and, being somewhat susceptible to the symbolic, I made sure to run through my notes on that particular text again, scanning my interpretation of Sylvy's enlightenment. I got up earlier than planned, giving into the relentless murmurings before packing my bag for the day and heading to campus in the early morning chill.

And the White Heron, after all its promise, continued to elude both Sylvy's hunter and my test-taking self. It was basically the only text of our semester-long reading that didn't make it on the exam.

Moral of This Story: dreams are just dreams (which knowledge happened to prove useful for my final essay on the American Dream, so all is not lost).

improv everywhere (even here)

Emilia was already at her desk when I arrived, studying away. "Ciao," she said, not even bothering to look up from her grammar, "Come stai?"

I let my bag drop to the floor with a loud thud. "Bravissima!" I cried. She turned around to take in the unexpected enthusiasm, eyebrows raised. "È primavera fuori," I added, giving all credit to the weather for my joy.

. . . . . . . . . . .

The rest of campus seemed to agree---it looked like every student had turned out to celebrate Spring. The grassy quads were full of friends studying, girls hitching their pants above their knees to catch the sun. Students walked leisurely in between classes, taking their time to remember what nature's warmth feels like. And Brigham Square was positively humming with noon-time activity---the perfect cover-up.

Sam and Bekah met me on the Bookstore steps just as the ROTC began their drill routine, the metal along their guns glinting in the April sun. I handed Bekah my bag of trail mix. "Three minutes?" she asked. I nodded.

A red-haired boy sidled up next to me, looking out at the crowd. "Is there something going on?" he asked. I shook my head. "Not that I know of---just lunchtime, I guess." He surveyed the square again, eyes wide. "It just seems like a lot of people." I hummed ambiguously, and he wandered away. Sam grinned. "Cool." Bekah checked her watch and motioned toward the library. "Should we get going?"

Just as we set off the trumpet played and the world froze over.

My arm was extended, one finger pointing up toward the art building, and I rocked on one heel to the other. Beside me, Bekah had laced her hands up through the straps of her backpack and her mouth stayed open in the beginnings of a sentence. Sam had bent over to pick up an errant flyer and posed there still, one finger keeping the paper to the concrete.

In front of me, the entire square had fallen silent, the masses immobilized at the first few notes of the university fight song. One girl had frozen while feeding her boyfriend a goldfish cracker; a boy across the quad was balancing on one foot while reaching forward to grab a friend. Only the ROTC marched on.

One minute later, the designated leader signaled the end and we all walked on as if nothing had happened.

. . . . . . . . . . . .

The experience was almost . . . beautiful? Over a thousand people had showed up. Beside the stunning sight of a university stilled in the midst of finals, the silence was something else. In one second, the clamor of a thousand different conversations ceased. Those poor souls left out of the secret fell silent, too, unnerved at the sudden stop of every thing around them. They wandered through the statued maze looking worried, some even averting their eyes. Some pretended not to notice at all, striding purposefully to their destination without slowing.

Those sort of people absolutely amaze me.

Afterward, Sam was practically skipping. "Was that not the best thing you've ever done? Ever?" he waved his arms for added emphasis. "I mean, that was social networking in all its glory." Bekah couldn't stop laughing. "How do we not do this all the time?!" she shouted. I agreed. "So what's next, then?" Sam considered this for a minute, studying the buildings around us. "The Administration. Or the Newspaper. Storm their offices, but in silence. Just stand and stare." He nodded. "Yes. Send the word."

yes.

If April showers bring May flowers, April snowstorms better whip up a bloody good show.

Just back from Juno at the Dollar Theatre. If I could piece together some coherent criticism I'd certainly type it here, but at the moment it's all something of a "huh." More or less wondering what all the fuss was about.

Caved in and bought A Countess Below Stairs Today. Think I've found my muse in Eva Ibbotson. Had one of those bookish moments where, resurfacing from a full two hours of novel, I quite literally forgot I was actually on a college campus amidst college students in the year 2008. That's when you know it's good.

Huzzah, Jim is back. Thursdays are happy again.

And I'm really only typing to avoid my dreams, which have been exceptionally bizarre lately. Oh well. Cowboy up and all that. Goodnight!

*what kind of expression is "cowboy up"?! Honestly.