Insomniac

I know it's not you. But I am. Truly sorry.



and I don't love you anymore.

Because I Love YA Lit

Days Like Today

...are good reasons to love life, and cry a little inside when I think about leaving Cleveland.

Today, I:

wore a flowy skirt. There is nothing sexier-feeling to me than the feeling of a soft skirt against freshly shaven legs. Especially on a breezy day like today, where the modesty of the skirt is totally blown to pieces because of the wind.

got followed by a construction worker who really wanted to take me out. I told him I had a super protective boyfriend, which--ha!

went to Whole Foods and was given an extra chocolate by the lady at the chocolate counter. I think the pants I changed into (because of the rain) are magic.

This past weekend I went to Lolita, which in and of itself is reason to cry about leaving Cleveland, went and saw Hot Fuzz which I intended to hate, based on the previews, but my girl B told me was awesome. She was right. (she is usually right.) I giggled the entire time, and now all I really want to do is see it again.

Who Needs Cocaine?

As I've mentioned previously once or twice or seventy-two times, I'm extremely sensitive to caffiene, and don't much care for its physiological effects--I break out in cold sweats and shake and sometimes get extremely paranoid. However, like many recreational drugs, caffiene has its positive effects as well.

Like today. Due to a mixup at Starbucks that resulted in two sugary drinks for me instead of the one I ordered, I have about four shots of espresso in me, and I'm feeling good. One of the pleasant side effects of being caffienated is my sudden surge in creativity. Last time I went to Starbucks, I wrote up a full staging description of Beckett's "Breath." Today, I have immense and boundless enthusiasm for my particle physics paper. Spend hours in the library perusing images of now-defunct particle detectors? AWESOME. This is now the best paper ever, the most exciting assignment, 2000 words is simply not enough to convey my thrill over the discovery of particles that don't interact and don't decay and don't do anything other than wank the egos of the men who predicted their existence. My presentation on this paper will not only be masterful, it will be the funniest, most engaging and enlightening presentation ever presented.

I'm just a little afraid to leave the library, that once I stop pouring all this energy into my paper that I will have to find something else to do with it, like run a marathon or build a skyscraper or maybe swim over to London for a few hours.

Also, something that I think is funny even to non-caffienated physicsists: John Adams, who was the director of CERN for a long-ass time, went to Russia to check out a particle accelerator. The director of the facility there presented him with a bottle of vodka, telling him it was to celebrate CERN's accelerator becoming functional and superior to the Russian accelerator. Construction on CERN's accelerator went ahead, and a few months later it began testing to acertain its energy levels. When the tests were finished and a meeting was necessary to disperse this information to the press and other interested parties, John just walked in, late, holding up the empty bottle of vodka.

Clouds in My Coffee

I took a paper to the Algebra tonight to work on. It's been a particularly difficult paper, mostly because it's in a subject I have zero love for (particle physics) and partially because the professor doesn't already love me and therefore will let me get away with writing whatever the hell paper I want thinly disguised as the paper assigned. It is most frustrating.

As I sat at the counter making a list of sources, I thought about how much writing this paper resembled the pulling of teeth or fingernails or other difficult-to-pull things, and suddenly I turned over my list and dumped out the e.e. I posted earlier, word for word, easy as breathing. Then I sat there and stared at it. It's one of my favorite pieces of poetry, easily, and one of the most powerful I've ever read.

There was a time when I would have said--"that's me, that's who I am, poetry on the back of physics." Now I'm not sure I'm either of those things. I don't feel like a poet very often anymore, and it's been a long time since physics held any magic for me. I miss the days of childlike wonder, of joy--of pure and simple, consuming joy.

On the other hand, now there's this sort of gritty adult pleasure in doing something completely and doing it very, very well. I feel like I'm going through life with my brow furrowed and my teeth slightly gritted, as opposed to standing still with wide eyes and open mouth in wonder. I still feel slightly cold.

Lately I feel conflicted about love--that maybe I do believe in it, but only as it applies to other people. That I'm not sure anyone will ever love me the way I believe I've loved (and been loved) in the past. That maybe I'm not even capable of loving anymore--at the age of twenty-two, I'm jaded enough to think it might be true and amused enough by my own hyperbole to know it's probably not.

And shameful to admit, but that I want it. I want to be in love again. Life may be stable now but it's also dull--and I miss the brightness. I'm no longer convinced this is the best way.

A Totally Fruitless Endeavor

I just got a question from a non-Harry Potter reader about the proper spelling of "disapparate." Upon running to my shelf to look it up, something struck me--that you never hear characters who are doing the action referring to it as "disapparition." They just refer to it as "apparition."

(Apparition is a sort of personal teleportation--you just kind of wink out and reappear wherever you wish to be. It's like "leaving"(disapparition) and "going,"(apparition) in a way.)

So, in order to "disapparate," you also have to be "apparating" somewhere else. Hence the reason no one doing this ever says it that way.

However.

People observing the action only see the disappearance. They're the ones who refer to "disapparition"--because that's what they observe!

yay for grammatical nuances of entirely fictional actions. I am such a nerd.

Hoos and Hokies. What's Up With Virginia Mascots?

I ran across this quote in Sean's away message and it reminds me of why I love Jefferson so much:

"Question with boldness even the existence of a god; because, if there be one, he must more approve of the homage of reason, than that of blindfolded fear."

I'm not the praying type. I'm not the religious type, either. I'm more your proponent of reason, your religion-as-philosophy. I don't go the the Bible to find comfort unless it's in the language, because the King James translation is one of the best pieces of poetry ever to hit the shelves.

However, there are words I go to for comfort, every time, and I can't believe that any god would fault me:

"then let men kill which cannot share,
let blood and flesh be mud and mire,
scheming imagine,passion willed,
freedom a drug that's bought and sold

giving to steal and cruel kind,
a heart to fear,to doubt a mind,
to differ a disease of same,
conform the pinnacle of am

though dull were all we taste as bright,
bitter all utterly things sweet,
maggoty minus and dumb death
all we inherit,all bequeath

and nothing quite so least as truth
—i say though hate were why man breathe—
because my father lived his soul
love is the whole and more than all" --e.e. cummings

Because Who Doesn't Love Mario?

Frustration.

Some of my particular favorite comments are:

"This is fucking worse than [insert random thing here]. FUCK!" Repeat, with different random things each time.

"This is worse than a R.L. Stein novel!"

"Who builds an elevator in a castle like this? All platforms go to a spinning death at the top!"

"Mario, shuffling off the mortal coil. Cock."

And on a side note, who designed this game? Satan?

Empty Chairs at Empty Tables

Virginia Tech set a national record today. They are now the location of the nation's highest death toll for a shooting spree--33 at present, including the shooter, and 29 more in the hospital.

This pisses me off for a number of reasons. One, the feeling, always the feeling with these things, that it could have been avoided. If someone had just known. If the alarm had been raised earlier. If someone had concealed an illegal handgun in the dorm and shot the fucker dead at 7:15 in the morning. You know. All the usual what-ifs.

But that quickly segues into my anger with the co-opters of tragedy. The uninvolved drama queens who will milk this for all the excitement it's worth, despite not really being affected. The people who will claim that since their third grade neighbor's kid went to VT, they are personally hurt and distraught by this. The people who will co-op all the sympathy for themselves, who will make this not about a college community that has been broken in the most terrible of ways, but another reason to deserve attention.

And I think about the people who have faith, and I wonder how their faith is holding up. If prayer helps them. If asking people who don't believe to pray helps them. If prayer will help any of the families as anything other than a meditation for peace and clarity. I do believe in prayer, but only for the person doing it. I don't believe that people can effect any change for others solely by prayer.

Finally, I think about the obvious comparisons. I think about Columbine, and I think about where I was in 1999. And I realize that I'm a senior, which means that everyone in college now went through the post-Columbine metal detectors, the workshops on how not to bully, on violence, the stricter gun laws, and I realize that nothing, NOTHING, has done any fucking good. Because all we have learned to do is kill each other better. More. With handguns. Not a crime of passion, not "I just started shooting, and didn't want to stop." But premeditated, with plenty of ammo, and two hours to make it from the dorm to the engineering building.

I'm not a Virginian by law yet, and I'm not sure I'll ever be one in my heart. But today's a day when I wish we could all just get along. That we could say with simplicity that we feel their pain, that we are a college campus too, that our security is all the more fragile for the fact that theirs has been breeched. That everything will always be slightly different from here on out. Dorms will be designed differently. Administrators will be briefed. And everyone, no matter how ineffectual, will pray that it never happens again.

Video Killed the Radio Star

I am supposedly writing a paper for particle physics. Since I have utterly no desire to learn more about the quark model or standard SU(3) symmetries and I've exhausted writing about the easy stuff, (like the discovery of the electron and Rutherford and the like) I am pretending to be the lead singer of Kansas while Carry On plays at a volume that will probably not wake my roommate.

Last night an argument arose over this commercial. I made the simple and clearly quite correct statement that the bass line in this song is the best ever recorded. One person agreed with me, the other yelled about Carry On and how it was obviously superior. In the interest of science, and of not getting any of the thirty thousand things I have to do before I graduate done, I have decided to listen to them both over and over and over until I can decide. If anyone has any other contenders, let me know!

Carpathian Ridge

I started off this fantastic ranty caffeinated post about two kinds of books: books like clockwork and books like labyrinths (there's a word for my list: Labyrinth. all kinds of sexy) and very quickly got bored. So here's what I have instead: A list of books that have rocked my world.

I don't use the term lightly. I mean the kind of book where you find yourself literally breathless when you can be bothered to look up and realize you're in the SAGES cafe or wherever and that this pirate battle or road trip or whatever is not actually taking place. Books that I might consider having surgically implanted into my abdominal cavity, except then they'd get all gooey and I wouldn't be able to read them.

So here they are, in no particular order:

House of Leaves, by Mark Z. Danielewski.

This book started an obsession with interactive literature, with metatext and all things utterly pretentious. And I found that no one can carry off a book like this like Mark Z. I've ranted about it before and I'll rant about it again: It's the most visual book I've ever read, a brilliant send-up of film criticism that somehow works both for and against itself, as well as a pretty decent thriller. It takes quite a bit to scare me, text-wise, and this book had me peeking around corners a little cautiously.

see also: 253, by Geoff Ryman.

Watchmen, by Alan Moore.

I have a difficult time hiding my newly-discovered love for the comic book genre. I am a huge Lex Luthor fan, and I love watching the crazy plots as they spin out of control and get cheesier and cheesier.

This book, it is not a comic book. It is simply a book that wouldn't have worked in any other form. Yes, it's about superheroes. Kind of. Just trust me on this one: it is one of the best books I have ever read in my life. It's the kind of book you reach the end of and turn it around to read it again, for the sheer pleasure of recognizing all the plot machinery in place. I catch new things every time I read it, and I still can't tell you how the book really ends because I'm always, always turning the pages too fast by that point.

see also: Identity Crisis, Brad Meltzer, and God Loves, Man Kills, by Chris Claremont.

Lolita, Vladmir Nabokov.

Gets me every time. Everyone who's ever tried to put this book to visuals has failed pretty spectacularly, because you just can't get that feeling of bounce and play on camera, the way the words seduce you all by themselves, without even the excuse of a story.

Plus, they get it wrong because Dolores Haze has not hit puberty (read: no boobs) and has auburn, curly hair. (not blonde) She's supposed to look twelve. It's a pedophiliac love song. A seductive one. The best unreliable narrator in the English language.

see also: Pale Fire. Say it: "I was the shadow of the waxwing slain."

Quicksilver, Neal Stephenson.

This is one of those books where you really just have to give it three hundred pages or so. As soon as you get off of Daniel Waterhouse, you get into the awesome pirate story. If you really want the full experience, I recommend reading Cryptonomicon first, to have some reason to tune in to the Waterhouse storyline, which can get old fast if a) you're not into British political history b) you're not into the history of science c) you don't already know who Robert Hooke and Gottfried Leibniz are. It's a Sisyphan task, this book and its sequels, but once the ball gets rolling it rolls fast. And well. If you like Hugo, and computers, you'll probably like Stephenson.

see also: The Confusion, The System of the World.

And as a special bonus, pair time:

The Collected Poetry of John Donne (by John Donne) alongside Wit by Margaret Edson.

It's no secret that I love John Donne. But when you juxtapose his fantastic mazy poems with Edson's play about life and death and wordplay and the search for meaning in literature--especially with the excellent TV version with Emma Thompson--Donne suddenly feels like the most modern man in the world.

caveat: I fucking hate the end of this play. It's so bad it almost ruins the rest of it, and the rest of it is pretty damn good.

Play, by Samuel Beckett, along with Dante's Inferno.

Beckett is my latest obsession. I drool and swoon for his bleakness and cycicism and for his complete inability to write anything that doesn't remind me of Dante. (I also drool and swoon over Alan Rickman in this play for the BBC.) I love when a writer isn't afraid to play with conventions--like plays in which nothing happens.

The Club Dumas, by Arturo Perez-Reverte, and anything ever written about the Devil, but probably Paradise Lost is best.

It wasn't so much the writing that got me on The Club Dumas, but the concept of tracking down ancient books on the occult to really, truly, summon a Satan who emerges as a god of knowledge and informed rebellion rather than an adversary. Plus I didn't see the twist coming at all, which is always nice. I've always found Paradise Lost to be the strangest read, because I find it hard to like Adam and Eve and remarkably easy to like (and love a little) Lucifer. Plus, he's the first evolutionist:

"..strange point and new!
Doctrine which we would know whence learnt: who saw
when this creation was? remember'st thou
Thy making, while the Maker gave thee being?
We know no time when we were not as now,
Know none before us, self begot, self rais'd
by our own quick'ning power..."

Ain't No Fool For Love Songs

A friend of mine has recently been diagnosed with one of those disorders that makes most people go "oh, that's not a real disease, it's all in your head." While on the phone with her tonight, I found myself thinking about what it is about a diagnosis that is so debilitating.

Because it's not the disease, or the disorder, or whatever. It's being told you have it, and what your options are. I mean, I have post-traumatic-stress-disorder, or PSTD as I never fail to call it when people are around to make fun of me. It didn't really bug me until I found myself seeking treatment from the kind of people who said "oh, poor you" when I told them about the source of my trauma. DON'T FUCKING PITY ME. I am doing just fine, thank you.

And then, after the diagnosis, they start in with the list of how this--thing--has affected your life, what a cramped existence you're living, and you start to think, well, maybe it would be nice to not mentally murder people who walk behind you in the street, that might be nice. And maybe to be able to ditch the nightmares that leave you feeling six years old, afraid to sleep and so pissed to be awake because you can't shake the terror, that might be nice. Maybe even stop kicking every other boyfriend during sex because...well, you get my drift.

But the thing is, I'll take the nightmares, and the sexual hangups, and the fear of being followed any day over a group of people who just want to help me. That help nearly failed me out of college and ended every relationship I had. During therapy I couldn't sleep, couldn't eat, and couldn't do any schoolwork whatsoever. I had to get a doctor's note for missing tests, and the soul-crushing despair of being the kind of person that cops out like that was far, far worse than being a rape survivor.

I quit therapy about a year ago, and although I am no better than when I started, it sure as hell beats being in it, and being enabled in all that victim-ness. (okay. I haven't kicked anyone in a while) Nothing is ever going to convince me that terrible things don't happen. Nothing will ever make me forgive the people involved--including myself. But you move on. You live with it. And you get up in the mornings, and 99 times out of one hundred, it doesn't rule your day, because no one is telling you it can.

That's the thing about my friend. She's still in the glorious phase where she's discovered she's not crazy, that there really is something wrong with her. That relief, the feeling that you have done nothing wrong, that you are not damaged or inferior in some way, is incredible. Then it starts to sink in that you will be expected to live this lifestyle, this having-this-disease-ness, for the rest of your life, and then it starts to suck. And if she's anything like me (and I know she is) she will come to much the same conclusion I did: admit you have a problem, and move on.

No, Shut Up!

This weekend I did the following things:

a) threw a wedding shower, at which I
b) got told repeatedly that I look like Rachel McAdams (flattering, but false) so I
c) watched Mean Girls with my mom.

I also:
d) lied to everyone about the state of my paper (done, when the truth was: not done)
e) began to panic about the impending graduation
f) helped my grandmother buy my heart's only desire: a KitchenAid Artisan stand mixer, in Empire Red. With a pasta maker. I am going to defer grad school to make ravioli.
g) rediscovered my love for the Doobie Brothers.
h) attempted to watch Charlie's Angels, which was entertaining because it gave me something to feel superior to for about half an hour.

I am now attempting to write the "finished" paper on Michel Tremblay. All I want to do is wank about how awesome I think Samuel Beckett is. And read Dante, and moon about over Dante. (oh God, the INFERNO) And then reread Paradise Lost, preferably out loud, and swoon. And then I can just roll around all over the script for Wit, and forget that I actually have to graduate and turn in not only a senior thesis, but also a paper on elementary particles. And one on Ireland. And one on a book which I have not read. And one on Eldred's production of Much Ado on Naboo. fuuuuuuuck.

Instead, I find myself listening to Queen and reminiscing about being in high school and dressing in tiedyed thigh high socks for basketball games, and how much I miss those days, especially the one night when 1.6 seconds meant everything, and how the roar of our crowd, our people, filled exactly half the arena, the other side dread silent.

"Without love, where would you be now? Without love?"

My Google Search Bar Says N-methyl-fluoxetine

The saddest thing I've seen today was a pansy dropped from one of my neighbor's flowerboxes when she took them in last night, wilted and halfway covered in ice. I hate this stupid snow. It's supposed to be spring!

The cells are doing well today, at least. I'm repeating some experiments exactly, but with the absence of a particular drug. All I really need are three to five cells that do what I want them to, and I'm on successful cell number two of the day. Go research!

It's just a blah day today. While I'm not as dispirited as I was yesterday, I still want to do something, go somewhere fantastic, have a Cleveland moment or something. I'm leaving so soon and I feel like I'm missing so many opportunities. If I can't go out, all I really want to do is buy flowers, pretend they're from someone else, and sit on the couch and pretend I get one more Cleveland summer.

Anyone want to go out? History quizzes aren't worth studying for anyway...

The Famous Chocolateer

I was reminded yesterday as I walked to comics class why I love spring. I'm not really big on the season as a whole--I'm not a fan of mud, or those spattery-windy-rainy days that always seem so petulant. But spring is certainly the best time of year to fantasize about living in a Willy Wonka-run biosphere.

That hill of grass? Could be scooped up with your hands and nibbled, and would taste like lime. Lime and wheatgrass, and the soil would be lime-infused chocolate. Sweet and tart. The forsythia branches could be pulled out whole, the flowers crunching in your teeth before you attacked the branch itself, chewy and tangy. Every flower, every tender leaf on every tree, would be edible. Spring is the most edible-looking season out there.

Which was why I was so upset when it snowed today. Snow is like shredded coconut on my Willy Wonka fantasy world, and I hate coconut.

"I guess it must be the flag of my disposition, out of hopeful green stuff woven."
~Walt Whitman

EDIT: I was making my final nightly blog round, and ran into this post by Stephanie:

Imagine that you'll be married in less than a year. What do you want for you right now, knowing that soon your life will never be the same?

For me right now, I would want not to be getting married in less than a year. What I want for me right now is to have as much of these next five years to be as selfish as humanly possible, to pursue my education without thought for what damage it might be doing to anyone else. To, I think, be a Dr. before I'm a Mrs., to perhaps have the personal fortitude to become an M.D.

I would regret getting married too soon--I'm not done yet. I'm still an amoeba, still hardening my exoskeleton. I change too dramatically in too short periods of time to ask anyone to stick by me for it, knowing I might suddenly dislike them in six months, or they me. Six months ago I wanted to graduate as Dr. R, not Dr. Leigh. His father's a surgeon, and I thought it would be so cool to be the second Dr. R in the family. Six months later, that's not what I want at all. I'm back to not knowing if I want to get married, or if I just think it's something I should do.

To my future husband, whoever you are: You are a brave man. I'm a handful. I'm a cold, harsh bitch with exacting standards and no qualms about letting people know when they haven't met them. I'm smart and I know it, and I have trouble admitting when I'm wrong.

But I am loving, and I am loyal, and I sincerely hope you're ready for me whenever I meet you.

Segregation, Masturbation, Samuel Beckett

I have this craving for blackberry gelato. Blackberry gelato and a rainy summer afternoon.

Today I was late to work because R had made off with my ID card to print some things and had not returned it. I pulled him out of Starbucks to go back to his house and get it for me, since I can't get into the medical school without it. On our way back, holding hands, he busied himself making fun of me for wanting him to visit me at work someday, calling my policy towards relationships one of "full integration." I pointed out that he loved it when I stopped by his office last summer and brought him coffee or just wished him a nice day. He pointed out that I hated it when he stayed late doing other people's work for them. I said that was a perfectly reasonable thing to dislike, especially when I was waiting for him. I doubt he'll ever know where I work, or with whom.

"I am drunk, Mrs. Butler, and I intend to get still drunker before the night is over."

As I recover from my Whole Foods-induced wonder tonight, I ponder if love is still love if you look back at the past and wonder how you can ever have had those feelings for the person who is today. I mean, I've thought I've been in love a lot, and yet the number of people I still love today is small. The ratio is much less than one. So I guess the question is: was it love if it isn't anymore?

Wine, chocolates, crab cakes, and a good biography will cure what ails me nine times out of ten. Now if you'll excuse me, I have a bottle to finish.

Don't Want No More

When my brother went off to college, I made my parents a care package of a few new CDs (since my mother listens obsessively to the exact same four CDs over and over and over again) and a couple of DVDs that I thought they'd like. They were completely flabbergasted; my mom told me repeatedly that she never thought I was listening when she talked about movies from the seventies she'd love to see again. It was, undoubtedly, the best gift-giving experience I've ever had.

I made two CDs for my dad; one a reproduction of the CD I made for him for my graduation party (long story there) and another full of happy, poppy country music, since that's what we both like. The final song on this CD was the original Dave Loggins "Please Come to Boston," although I think I prefer Kenny Chesney's cover. Dad expressed great surprise that I even knew about this song, much less liked it enough for it to end up on his CD. I expressed great surprise that I wouldn't know and love this song, since in my opinion it's one of the best country songs ever recorded.

Dad's other CD is the best driving CD I've ever made, and I wish I could take credit for it, but it's all him. There's the Doobie Brothers. There's the Edgar Winter Group. There's Bachman Turner Overdrive. There's Styx. (Shut up. I love Styx.) There are so many songs about driving, about sports in small towns, about leaving places you don't want to be in, about trying to get to places you want to be in more than anything...it's the absolute best CD for tearing down a straight country road with all the windows down. What's not on the CD, oddly enough, is Boston.

Boston is where my dad and I really, really mesh. Somehow Dad's love of this band transmitted itself completely to both my brother and I, leaving us about thirty years behind the times. My brother's grown out of it, a bit. I haven't. Boston fucking rocks. They were the first band I ever saw live, at a concert I attended with my parents. They wrote the first song I ever really had with a boyfriend. (Livin' for You) They provide the soundtrack to workouts, to cleaning rampages, to walking to class when I really need to feel like dancing.

They aren't particularly lyrically profound. They're good musicians, but many of their songs sound similar, and they seem to have been incapable of editing themselves down under five or six minutes, and it really hurts on some of their songs. (See: Kalodner edit of Higher Power. Fucking great song. Higher Power in its original released form? Too long, which makes it sound pretentious.) But they are the band of my teenage years, of my family, and of my past, and I love them. And their harmonies are kickass.

It's been such a long time
I think I should be going
And time doesn't wait for me, it keeps on rolling
Sail on, on a distant highway
I've got to keep on chasing a dream
I've gotta be on my way
Wish there was something I could say.

Well I'm takin my time, I'm just moving on
You'll forget about me after I've been gone
And I take what I find, I don't want no more
It's just outside of your front door.

Well I get so lonely when I am without you
But in my mind, deep in my mind,
I can't forget about you
Good times, and faces that remind me
I'm trying to forget your name and leave it all behind me
You're coming back to find me.

Well I'm takin my time, I'm just moving on
You'll forget about me after I've been gone
And I take what I find, I don't want no more
It's just outside of your front door.