Notes From The Empire State

I rode in the backseat of a slick Chevy Camaro speeding down the highways of Rochester last night, the calm roar of its supercharged engines accompanied by music blaring out of its speakers. We were going twice over the speed limit, and doing it all while listening to the vocal stylings of Enya (because like the Camaro, Only Time is such a bad-ass song).

My sister, riding shotgun, threw her head back in laughter at the ridiculous-ness of the situation; the Mexican next to me was slapping his knees in delight, and the Lebanese behind the wheel tried his damndest to make sure his eyes (and concentration) remained fixed on the road. It was one of the most bizarre moments of my life, and I don’t think I can listen to Only Time anymore without laughing out loud.

Why Do You Sing Hallelujah

I had a science teacher in middle school curtly dubbed “Mr. H” by people who deemed his surname too bothersome to pronounce in full (a sentiment shared by pretty much the entire school population—yes, all forty of us). Before passing up classwork to him, we students had a habit of raising our arms and exclaiming “Mr. H, I’m done.”

On normal days, he would indicate for us to approach and hand over the work. But there was one day when he looked up, cocked an eyebrow, and asked, “Really? Are you really done?”

The black sheep du jour then was HC, who proceeded to reply with a suspicious “Yeesss…”

“Really?” Mr. H said. “When you think about it, you’ll find that you’re never really done with anything; you can be almost done, but never completely done until you’re dead. So don’t say you’re done; say you’re almost done.”

After my fifth and final exam of the semester, I wanted to sing the words “I’m done” to the tune of Michael Jackson’s I’m Bad; but then I remembered Mr. H and his philosophical inquiry in the middle of that eighth grade science class, so I stopped short of doing a bad moonwalk. As far as being almost done goes, I’ve achieved plenty.

I was on my on my knees last Friday afternoon, lovingly folding jackets, sweaters, and packing them for the summer. Glancing around the room, I am immediately disheartened: sifting through the multiple strata of stuff alone will require several sonar readings and the dedicated efforts of a seasoned archaeological team. Different items are unearthed at random corners of the room: M finds a crisp fifty-thousand yen bill from a desk drawer, and I fish a half-dozen pens from the pocket of my favorite coat. People who know me are also acquainted with my disdain for packing but alas, as luck may have it, it is a fine art I have come to master after years of unwitting practice. I close the zippers of the oversized black suitcase, and that was it for my coats.

At about eight-thirty yesterday morning, I start on one of three essays about Nasser and the Egyptian revolution, but the only words swirling in my head are the lyrics to Sherry by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons. Gah. By the time I complete them, my eyes are glazed over and bleary. Drained and catatonic, I pretend to skim over my answers before rising to hand the essays to the prof at the front of the room, thus effectively relieving my behind of the dead weight I had subjected it to for the past two hours. “Thank you, sir,” I say sincerely. I like this professor for his contagious dedication to his craft, he is very good at what he does. He retaliates with a smile and thanks me, while still mispronouncing my name the way through. I smile politely and walk out of room 310, and that was it for Middle Eastern History this semester.

In about a minute or two, I am going to shut down my laptop and unplug the cable that connects my machine to the internet. I will then carelessly throw said laptop into a heavy backpack and prepare to walk out the door; and then like the closing scenes out of formulaic prime-time television dramas, Damien Rice’s Delicate will play in my head as I pause melodramatically under the doorframe to wistfully replay the conversations and inside jokes established in the now-barren room. Remember that one time we maintained a three-way conversation which consisted of nothing but raucous laughter? Or that other time we had a debate about existentialism, and then a second later squealed about how awesome hippos are? It’s amazing how much laughter could stem from such a sorry-looking commode, and I know I will be back here in the fall in time for more, but for this semester, this is it.

(Mr. H was a really neat guy, but I think he was fired under suspicion of pursuing a romantic relationship with the married math teacher. Scandal at the British school!)

If You’ve Ever Been A Lady To Begin With

Good luck occurs in brusque, sporadic moments that correspond to vigorous words: spate, onslaught, gush. I wonder if we can exchange these brief, random bursts of good luck for an evenly distributed streak of okay-luck throughout the entire span of life. I would have no interest in this barter because such okay-ness would make life less interesting, but it would bring great comfort to those who do not want to stray from the beaten path, like accountants and pre-law kids. A lucrative enterprise indeed, but this gives rise to new problems:

• What currency would one use in the event of exchanging metaphysical fortunes?
• Should unscrupulous business dealings take place, what sort of punishment and reprimanding await wrongdoers?
• Who would head the watchdog group that handles said wrongful business deals?

Tomorrow, I will be flung into the thick of finals, and my most treasured companion is more Sharpie on balloon than mammalian bipedal capable of higher brain functions; this is very bad, because his silence makes him a poor study partner. But sigh, the summertime is nigh: a season characterized by warmth, sunshine, and drunk boys howling an unnecessary expletive as they drive by the window. It is the season for poetry and fiction, for iced teas on breezy afternoons and Long Island Iced Teas on warm evenings. And now I am done waxing lyrical.

Next Sunday, I will rendezvous with Sister Antiguit in New York, and in the two Tuesdays that follow, we shall board a giant metallic transport to Singapore. This time, if I am stranded overnight in an airport again, I shan’t have to rely on the kindness of strangers for their participation in a heated debate about the accuracy of carbon-14 dating. Neither will I have the misfortune to sit in between two large men on the plane, who will rest their heavy craniums on my shoulders when they fall asleep (this has happened). They will also snore, reek of expired milk and sulphur, and posess the table manners of the common hyena (been there, smelled that, and almost threw up once because of that last thing).

The evenings here have been very warm that I’ve had to sleep with an ice pack clamped between random limbs. Despite this attempt at keeping my corporeal core at a low temperature, I find myself stirring awake at random hours of the night to change out of my sweat-drenched clothes; I would return to bed all hot and bothered, and robbed of hours of REM sleep. Solutions?

(Comments may now be accessed by way of the fleuron at the end of every post)

A Tale Of Two Cities

The Deluge

Van Morrison was thinking of our fair lady M when he sang Brown Eyed Girl. M and I turned twenty in the same week, and we both found that the beating muscle located within the confines of our left chest cavities swelled with an unfamiliar emotion we can only attribute to stone-cold fear. To quell these irrational fears, our compeers helped us re-enact some childish flippancy; that is, we decided to forgo the classic “let’s bring some chips and salsa to the party and see what happens” tactic in favor of a Halfway to Halloween extravaganza.

We celebrated the little-known Halloween Solstice by donning costumes the way we would in Halloween. For instance, in a bid to mirror the declining standards of our society, I went to the festivities dressed as Entropy: I started out the evening a wholesome young woman, and ended it a complete floozy. M went as I Don’t Really Know If I Want To Be Here. Other curious characters of the evening included Social Science Broadfield Major, Super Poker Face, and Hammered Nepali.

There was plenty of laughter and inappropriate giggling. The physical manifestation of all this happiness whittled away what little maturity we had, and we were essentially one ice cream cake and two magicians away from turning into ten year-olds. My friends are very good; they are quality human beings, and if they were not human beings they would be morbidly fat chickens who consciously walked into a slaughterhouse with intentions of alleviating global hunger.

Only one week of classes before finals, and already History 220 wants me dead—dead I tell you, just like the people we talk about in that class. Still, because my skills for setting good priorities are at an all-time low, I will spend the rest of the week wallowing in denial by listening to the Bee Gees and watching good movies. My weeks need to be occupied with more classic motion pictures befitting of greatness, because I glow that rich pregnant woman flush when it happens, with the difference being I’m not pregnant.

But I digress. Happy birthday, M! I hope the party lived up to your standards. May your trigger finger remain click-happy, your D70s equipped with sexy lenses, and may a contract with Corbis/Magnum/AP/Reuters await you upon your ejection from the shackles of tepid academia. Mazel tov!

(M is a conflict photographer in the making. It’s shots of flowers and sunsets today, tanks and riot gear tomorrow. Check out her stuff on her DeviantART and Flickr accounts.)

My Sinistral Classmate

2007. The boy who sits next to me at International Relations is left-handed, and I am not. There are days when he comes to class late, and so his usual place to my left is occupied by an unfamiliar right-handed female; this is all fine and dandy, except this means Lefty takes the unoccupied seat to my right. When this happens, there are pages in my notebook where random sentences fly out of the page as a result of hour-long sessions of accidental elbow-bumping with Lefty. “Sorry,” we mutter to each other when violent limb contact occurs. We resume note-taking without skipping a beat. Two minutes later, our elbows collide again when frenzied dictation hits fever pitch. “Sorry,” we mutter mutedly, and we resume note-taking without skipping a beat.

2002. M is such a gifted, gifted artist. She produces pieces of art that leave me crestfallen about my own artistic capabilities, and it looks as if she is about to do it again. We sit down for an art class to finish up oil paintings we had started on earlier that week. I pick up an emaciated tube of paint and try to wrest the blasted thing open, but it has been crusted shut after years of unuse. I try to open it with my left hand, and only end up cutting myself. Confound it all! I make another effort to open it with my right hand, but it slips and I elbow M in her good painting arm—that is, her left arm. “Aiyah!” she yelps. I see a fresh streak of green paint run across her piece. The girl knows better than to sit on my right in Algebra, let alone Art. I guess we all forget sometimes.

1998. The temperature of Jakarta at high noon is comparable to Dante’s description of hell in The Inferno. But Indonesia just walked away victorious with the Thomas Cup, and in the wake of patriotic fervor, all of us youngsters are eager to follow in the footsteps of our hero-athletes. The basketballs and volleyballs at recess have been replaced with a proliferation of badminton rackets and shuttlecocks. P and I are teamed up in a heated doubles badminton match against our rivals, and we have match point. The witches on the other side of the net serve. We both scramble to return what was supposed an easy final point, but somehow our rackets tangle in mid-air as we helplessly watch the shuttlecock flutter to the ground. We would have won that game faster if she were not a leftie, or if I were not some graceless right-handed person borne of common physiological stock.