Well, I guess it's just the writer in me

No one can find the rewind button now

Growing up is difficult to accept because it’s about so much more than this dog-in-the-manger business — this idea that the amount of time we have to figure things out is dwindling, and we have so much less now than we did then.

It’s particularly challenging because of the fact that during K-12, we knew with absolute certainty that we were doing the right thing by putting our sanity on the line to study, with the eventual goal of getting into college. That was the correct thing to do and there was no alternate choice. Life was to be lived in quotidian terms, not thinking too far ahead, just going on with the misguided notion that this period of preparation — with all its safety nets and support systems — had an indefinite end date.

Never again after high school graduation do we ever have that certainty that we’re doing the right thing, or are in the right phase of our lives. That guarantee is gone forever. The warranty on happiness is null and void.

From here on out, every life decision could be a mistake. (We’ll never know, because no one will make them for us.)

 

Humor me

The endless profusion of cute rebloggings on Tumblr makes one think about how humor has changed over the years. We’re in this pop culture now where people can draw little faces on each Tic Tac in a box and then take a picture of it and blog it online, and it’s automatically quirky and unique. The whole concept is compelling but — like Zooey Deschanel — not quite substantive enough to feel like comedy that society will consciously be proud of in twenty years.

Yesterday, I met Betty White. It awes and inspires me that her sense of humor has managed to transcend so many generations. Twenty years from now, I think the world will still feel the same way. She is the sweetest person: charming and polite, and she called me a darling several times when I met her after the program. (I told her I’d heard about her presidential campaign bid, and that I hope she wins! She seemed thrilled and it was kind of an amazing moment.) I cannot get over the fact that she is so unbelievably on top of things. Her humor is quick as a whip. When her interviewer, NPR’s Sam Litzinger (who is also fantastic) started rambling about how he once encountered a tarantula and could teach Betty how to pick one up after the show, if she wanted, she immediately responded “I’ve heard a come-on before…” 

Her commitment to helping animals — and how hard she has worked as a comedian and in her career as a whole — sort of makes me feel ridiculous. It actually makes me feel like I am wasting my time, whiling my summer away the way I am. She’s 90 and she’s still doing things every day. She works 50-hour weeks on set. She works for the LA Zoo! She was sitting in the lap of a gorilla as recently as three years ago! And it was so plain that every word she said about her love for animals and her co-workers was completely genuine…she’s a national treasure for certain.

My family laughed when I told them I had to go hear her speak when she came to DC, but it didn’t matter. I showed up alone for it and the auditorium was packed with the type of crowd that tends to pervade speaker events in DC (it skews old; the 20-something demographic is basically missing, which is one thing that distinguishes it absolutely from NYC) but that didn’t matter either. The 60-something couple sitting next to me were very talkative so we bonded a bit. Betty White brings people together. I hope I run into them again sometime.

The minor fall, the major lift

While reading the Style section of the Post this morning, I happened upon the movie listings, which I usually never read because I know less than nothing about movies (seriously, negative amounts. I sense that my comprehensive knowledge of DCOMs, particularly the High School Musical trilogy, actually subtracts from my zero repository of film intelligence in the eyes of the world. No clue why.)

Anyway, I saw that The Five Year Engagement is playing…exciting, because I actually know about it from a trailer and I’ve been wanting to see it! Then I noticed that it’s rated R.

Immediate first thought: Shoot. Now I have to find a responsible adult willing to accompany me to this movie, which can never happen because it’s a romcom and would be awkward with chaperones.

Five minutes later…

…Wait. I am that adult.

 Oh, the disorientation of being home.

Halfway

“There is a universal truth we all have to face, whether we want to or not. Everything eventually ends. And as much as I’ve looked forward to this day, I’ve always disliked endings. The last day of summer, the final chapter of a great book, parting ways with a close friend. But endings are inevitable; leaves fall, we close the book, we say goodbye. Today is one of those days for us. Today we say goodbye to everything that was familiar, everything that was comfortable. We’re moving on. But just because we’re leaving and it hurts, there are some people who are so much a part of us that they’ll be with us no matter what. They are our solid ground, our north star, and the small clear voices in our hearts that will be with us, always.”

-Alexis Castle, Castle “Always”

In the room next to this one, there is a set of boxes brimming with the vestiges of a life that can no longer quite be called mine. These elementary school artifacts used to adorn every mantel and molding in my room, but after stowing them away before college, they were never reintroduced, left to be excavated at some indefinite later date. Whenever I reopened those boxes after coming home, the memories of my childhood life – free of any expectations of maturity and responsibility – came back to tempt me. I wondered how wrong it would be to free some of those curios from the shackles of years-deep dust and prop them up on my nightstand once more, slipping comfortably at the same time back into that carefree nine-year-old existence. One day, rooting through the boxes, I found myself looking into the eyes of a ceramic puppy container I received ten years ago. I gave in to its plaintive gaze and put it back in my room for one night.

The next morning, it caught my glance again. Pondering its placement on my already-cluttered desk, I went downstairs, deciding to skip breakfast (a decision which would have been out of my hands at age nine), finalize an internship (I would have been terrified to contemplate venturing into the professional world as a fourth-grader), and watch the Colbert Report (self-explanatory). Somehow, in that moment, the obvious truth became plentifully clear: the world of a college student is inevitably different from the world of a child. It is molded and remolded so many times long after the age of ceramic animals, princesses and pirate ships is over. I put the puppy back into its box, sealing it with tape and understanding for literally the first time that I was not betraying my childhood self; just packing it away for the time being, to be dusted off every now and then.

Time is like that: fragile as a glass memento, possible to preserve only if we wrap it up carefully and leave it in its place. It’s difficult to keep in step with, but the only reason we feel the pull to do anything differently from day to day. You leave some things behind (a pumpkin stain on a dresser in a dorm room or three sets of initials carved into a wall, for example) and you take others with you (books, tickets, Huffington Post wristbands, friendships). In the end, you have more than one home – be it the place where you grew up or cities you never imagined calling your own — as long as you keep the people who matter close. The past may be sealed in a cardboard box, but sometimes it really is enough just to know that it is there.
The time capsule that counts is in our minds. It moves with us.
 

-suhnahlee, June 10, 2011

First-world questions

…Near to bursting from eating so much food today. Actually, I just had a normal average-sized meal, but it’s the first one I’ve had in the past few days, during which subsistence has consisted mainly of coffee and an old pack of raisins. And a sandwich or four-hour nap once a day.

Realization: after you don’t eat for a while, your tolerance for holding food in your stomach actually goes down. You shrink a bit. There’s a period after you eat again for the first time in awhile when you come back up to life slowly, the way one of those magic towels does when you put it in water. It takes about 45 seconds for the rejuvenation to kick in.

Who buys magic towels, anyway? My best — and only — guess is that they’re purchased because of their lightweight portability, so that people going on vacation can transport ten times more towels in one bag than they would have been able to otherwise. Then they can toss them into buckets of water as needed.

…What exactly is the use of having a large, dinosaur-shaped towel, though, if it is already soaking wet?

If you are a magic towel aficionado, I promise I mean no offense by this post. Just pondering imponderables instead of studying for my last two finals…you know.

We rattle this town.

screen falling off the door / door hanging off the hinges
my feet are still sore / my back is on the fringes
we tore up the walls / we slept on couches
we lifted this house / we lifted this house

fire-crackers in the east / my car parked south
your hands on my cheeks / your shoulder in my mouth
i was up against the wall on the west mezzanine
we rattle this town / we rattle this scene

what do you know? this house is falling apart
what can i say? this house is falling apart
we got no money, but we got heart
we’re gonna rattle this ghost town
this house is falling apart

Finals week: let’s rattle this scene.

Yes, I do, incidentally, realize that the actual meaning of this song is completely different from the way I just attempted to use it…but I’ve been listening to it nonstop for about 12 hours and it got me through the night somehow, so here it is.