effective fictional moment of the day

"Anyway, they were poor company and of no help to her with the solitude without prelude that could rise up and take her prisoner when Jacob was away. She might be bending in a patch of radishes, tossing weeds with the skill of a pub matron dropping coins into her apron. Weeds for the stock. Then as she stood in molten sunlight, pulling the corners of her apron together, the comfortable sounds of the farm would drop. Silence would fall like snow floating around her head and shoulders, spreading outward to wind-driven yet quiet leaves, dangling cowbells, the whack of Lina's axe chopping firewood nearby. Her skin would flush, then chill. Sound would return eventually, but the loneliness might remain for days."


-Toni Morrison, A Mercy page 109.

If by "distracted"

she means "way too cool."

It's difficult to trust babies with big skulls.

a) this is funny
b) I wish everyone had to give a speech before they died

exceedingly glad to know

how Olivet Nazarene University spells "peruse."

Dear ever-and-always-forsaken blog

that I turn into a diary because I don't have the desire/energy anymore to comment on this boisterous world,

It is a difficult thing to be 24. So difficult. You don't even know. Especially when you're in Kankakee where 14-year-old boys and 40-year-old nursing assistants stare at you for prolonged, unapologetic minutes every time you walk into a coffee shop (you know what I'm talkin' 'bout, Camille. They don't mean anything by it, I know. It's perfectly polite to stare in East Central Illinois, as it is in Kenya-or so I've heard). Especially when your dog would rather crawl under the bed where he can't be reached and lay there for hours at a time contemplating his own dog-loneliness. BUCK UP, BISCUIT! You're not helping me out here, buddy.

I'm just kidding. It's not that bad. I just picked up Nine Stories again (I know, I'm insane) and found to my delight that I'd never before read the perfectly delightful story Just Before the War with the Eskimos. And, I've been reading people's stories about their experiences with the Peace Corps, and realized that I'm very glad to be sitting here so privileged and bored. But, not really. I'd really rather be crying with the frustration of eating rotten goat meat for a twelfth day straight, or attempting to climb a mountain full of spiders hiding among wildflower thorns, or some such thing. The frustrations of stasis are much worse. It makes you feel pretty bitter and helpless to squander your youth (and what little I've got of youthful energy) waiting and getting nowhere. I also have dresses with nowhere to wear them, but at least I can still wear them, you know?

What I'd really like is to be in Haiti. But I have nothing to offer Haiti. I've somehow just now realized that my degree was only for me (Oh...I have to go back to school, don't I?).

On a positive note, the more I talk to fellow unemployed 20-somethings, the more I realize that we aren't really as complacent as I often think. Most people I've talked to would really rather be doing something to help people--it's just that it's so hard to know where to start when non-profits aren't hiring and this whole system of urban/suburban living in the U.S. is set up to make us work for what we want, and not for what our neighbors need. Please, God, don't let me work a corporate job while giving a portion of my income to charity. I've got to figure out a way to harness 20-something capital-less optimism... should I make an idealist.org-facebook? Hmm, nope, it turns out that a minor in Information Technology Studies merely asks you to postulate about the social impacts of information systems, rather than teaching you anything of programming or web design.

Well, there is the Peace Corps. Apparently I'm going to have to leave home again. But it just takes so much energy to start your life over again every single year. I don't want to do that anymore. I'm all for making new friends and all, but I've got such good old ones. Peace Corps should have an option where you take five of your closest unemployed friends with you to work on the same project together. Except, that's not enough, and they won't do it anyway. Unemployed friends tend to be wishy-washy. They bathe in wish-wash. Can I bring a whole city with me? See, I grow sick of independence. Alas.

Does this all come down to dollars and cents, you ask? It does. It is clearly a case of not having a room of one's own from which to start something. I will consider appealing to wealthy relatives, or to the generous, debt-ridden state of Illinois.

Someone give me something else to think about, please.

Truth.

"I'm going inside now, because I hate you guys."

That's what I just said to the bugs on my back porch. hahaha I'm going crazy.

(UPDATE: The next day I said to a bee, "I could kill you if you want.")

Sometimes the President's appeal works against him, 'cuz all the knowledge I got from that speech was

1997: Question: Where have all the cowboys gone?

2009: Answer: Found one.

1, 2, 3

1. When a field of beans begins to die the round leaves turn all shades of yellow and it looks like a field of wildflowers. If you didn't wear your contacts while driving.

2. Does anyone understand Miss Lonelyhearts? I must have read that too quickly.

3. When you're unemployed, you should get up and get dressed every day anyway. That's conventional wisdom, right? Well, it's true.

bam.

UGHHhhh why does this song/video have to be so awesome and simultaneously so laaaaaame?

It's so freakin cool to refer to women as bitches and place them in the category of "problem." Some day this will no longer be socially acceptable. Won't that be crazy. People will be like, "Can you believe that shit? And that was only forty years ago!" This will be, like, three people saying this on top of an almost-submerged mountain with a leftover penguin and whatever else survives. A centipede, maybe.

what I can't believe exists

is this right here. Why does it exist? I accidentally listened to this guy talk about his book on a Christian radio station while driving to Champaign, and within the space of a few excruciatingly annoying minutes he managed to assert that 

a) men are, of course, born with a greater store of courage

b) they need this courage to protect those "vulnerable and weak" people in their lives (their wives, and yes, those were the actual words used)

c) masculine courage (somehow aligned with physical strength) is what characterizes the heroes of our country- like, for example, the notoriously masculine MLK (...). 

When I read stuff like this I appreciate scholars and their methodical and their measured ways of letting you know that you're just spouting back the lies that you've always liked to be told. Because I can't do it. 

waking me up

Well, East of Eden's the best thing that's happened to me this year. No kidding. Except I get illogically sad that these characters were never real, that of course they never actually lived, and couldn't even have died. And I think of all the good people I know, and know that no one will ever read a book about them. But then, I suppose I believe there's already a story that's been written about all of us. At the moment, though, I don't favor thinking of people as tiny parts of a grand scheme, like stars in the milky way. I guess sometimes I wish that every person were a god, the secret, only-important meaning behind everything.

And that we could know it.

Guess I'll have to invent a machine that turns a person into their life's book.

lucrative opportunity

Do you, by any chance, want me to live in your closet and hand you your outfit for the day as soon as you open the closet door (like pop!)? I will work frantically all night, joyously, in exchange for closet-rent. Think about it.














(note: Looks like this girl had the same idea. She didn't have much to work with, though. The person pretty much had to wear that blanket every day, Little Mermaid style, I guess. It is kinda cute. Hmm. If I were in this closet I would gnaw at the wood all night so that I could design the blanket-dress with little wooden splinter-stars. Have I convinced you yet?)