- My first remote update! I am at GSP. It is planning week. I am in List-Making-Mode.
- It’s the smells that set off my memory, and the strongest of those memories, weirdly, are of this week last year, rather than GSP proper. Maybe it’s because that’s when I first encountered these smells–the same way the smell (odor? miasma?) of Nevin still reminds me of my five weeks there during my GSP, instead of my whole freshman year.
- Same floor. Same room. Six dumb flights of stairs or the bitchy elevator. And the lights don’t work as well this year.
- But! I get to practice saying “Sixth Todd” as all one syllable again.
- I got Brushfire Fairytales and Dirty Vegas. Both are really good, although I think I like the former better. (Jon, let me know if you want me to burn you a copy of the second. Just to try before you buy, ofcourse.)
- I shouldn’t say this, because Kim and Taylor will probably read it, but I don’t think it really matters now. Last year’s campus director was named Laura. This year’s director of seminar is a different Laura. The first one is about as gone as you can get, but every time someone mentions the second Laura by name, I shudder involuntarily.
- The new campus director is named Joe, and he’s kickass, awesome, right on. I’ve been looking forward to working with him since the retreat in April, and so far it’s every bit as good as I’d hoped.
- I loved our staff last year, and I would have been happy to see any of them return. Not many of us did–some by choice, some not so much. But the few who did come back… well, if you’re reading this and you didn’t make it this year, don’t take this the wrong way: again, I loved you all. But Erin, Mooch, Jimmy and Caudill are the ones I would have picked if I’d had four choices, and they’re all back, and that makes me really happy.
- But.
- B Rich and Harney would have been in my picks too, except I knew they were going to be head RAs last year anyway. And they’re brilliant and exactly right for the job, and it’s going to be a good time, with them around.
- There’s simply no comparison to draw between them and the people who had those jobs last year. Not just apples and oranges, but, like, apples and tungsten.
- So it’s not that I miss last year’s head RAs because I want them doing the job again. It’s that Emma and Drew were my friends, and now that I’m here again, with these smells and that room and those memories, I miss them so much it’s like a knife in my side.
- That said. It’s going to be a good six weeks.
Category: Angst
I don’t really guess I’m qualified for this. But sometimes you have to write, and sometimes you have to speak for thedead.
I was in love with Alycia Smith for a long time. She knew it, and she teased me about it, and then she was in love with me for a while but nothing ever came of it except friendship, because that’s how things like that work out most of the time. We stopped talking as much after I graduated–I came here to Centre, and a year later she went to U of L. We saw each other at church sometimes, on weekends home.
Maybe a couple months ago, she IMed me again out of nowhere, and we talked and it was sweet and beautiful and we were starting to get to be good friends again. I missed talking to her in real life. I was looking forward to this summer,and maybe seeing her again.
You know this is coming by now, I guess. She drove over the median sometime yesterday, or last night, and ran head-o ninto another car. She, her boyfriend in the passenger seat and the other driver were all killed.
Alycia would hate reading this. She was a much better writer than me, and she wouldn’t stand for this kind of cliche. Especially the part where I tell you that it’s sitting on my brain now, like I think I’m going to wake up; where I tellyou that she was alive, more alive than anyone; where I tell you that she of all people…
She lived a little outside the lines. She wrote brilliant sad stuff that yes, was amateurish, but showed every sign of blossoming into real brilliant mature poetry and fiction. She drew pictures with the touchpad on her laptop. She had sex with more people than are usually in one bed at the same time.
She had beautiful long black hair that she cut to a bob after high school. I asked her to mail me a lock when I foundout she’d gotten rid of it all, and she promised she would. She never did. She loved manga and black and Poe and girls and boys and English. She sent me a bunch of naked pictures of herself the other day, half as a joke. She’s beautiful in every one of them.
She beat me out of a spot in the Governor’s School for the Arts once, and I was a little disappointed but mostly proud. I went to GSP instead of GSA, and we left around the same time, and while she was gone she started writing me letters–stories and jokes and cartoons and brilliance. I got them all in a box from my mom one day, and I sat in the library and read through them and could barely believe that people like her existed. That was four years ago, less one month.
Alycia didn’t really want to get old. I always hoped her life would outlast her lifestyle. It didn’t, and now the people who loved her have only who she was to love, and not who she would have been. I wish it were enough.
The first time I kissed her it was magic, real honest to God magic: starlight, and streetlight, and trees shaking their leftover rain down on us. Everyone on campus disappeared, and every car in the city stopped, and there wasn’t a sound except a little wind and the silver of her laugh.
There’s a wonderful little book I have called Rats Saw God. Everyone who was ever in high school should read it. It’s about relationships, and people, and love and being kids; one of the most resonant lines in it, for me, was “why ruin something so perfect by trying to make it last forever?”
The first time that question appears, it’s being asked of the protagonist; the second time, he’s asking it himself. I always thought I’d understand it if I had the chance. I think tonight I did.
Magic doesn’t last forever; it doesn’t last, period. I get that now. I’m glad I do. I’m glad I just had the only good breakup I’ve ever had, and that it wasn’t really a breakup at all, just an understanding.
I’m going to miss Emily a lot this summer, but that just means it’ll be even better when I see her again in the fall. And after all, why ruin something so perfect by trying to make it last forever?
Yesterday morning, my uncle John got up at some ridiculous hour and ran fifty kilometers. Fifty kilometers. Then he kept walking until he had done fifty miles. Then he went home, had something to eat and went to an unusual retrospective of his work.
Uncle John makes custom birthday cards, and has done so since he was a teenager. A few weeks ago, my aunt Dana started sending letters to friends and family asking to borrow any cards we might have saved. Of course, everybody had saved everything–you don’t get a personal work of art in the mail and throw it away when you’re done.
They got enough cards to fill four rooms full of shelves (and they had leftovers). During the day it was an exhibition for clients; that night, when I got there, it was food and a jazz band and my uncle’s fiftieth birthday party.
It was one of the best gallery shows I’ve ever seen. The sheer volume of work and creativity and originality was humbling and inspiring and it still stuns me a little to think that I own at least a dozen of those original pieces myself.
I think it was my tenth birthday when I got the foldout card. It was a huge battle scene my uncle had drawn and then left half-empty, inviting me to fill in the rest. It was perfect. It was one of the best presents I’ve ever received, and I could probably redraw it from memory.
I was a weird little kid, and if I’d been born to different parents I probably would have been a Ritalin poster child.The only things that could get me to sit still for ten minutes were a big fat fantasy book or a chance to draw with my uncle. I didn’t quite get all the genes that give him his talent, or maybe his dedication–he did better stuff at fifteen than I can hope for now–but everything I love about sequential art comes from trading panels with him on “Captain Zero” and “The Adventures of Petey.” That this site exists as more than a blog is due to him.
A dozen cards, a million comic strips. Happy birthday, Uncle John, and thanks for all my presents.
Glorious, hellish, surprising, panicked, funny, awful, done. Except not really surprising at all. I’m starting to recognize that there’s a reason people rave about this kind of timed project–the artificial limits bring out ability you otherwise have no reason to use. Anyway, it was worth it, and this is what I got.
That’s there to read only if you’re well beyond “bored” into “catatonic.” This is not to say it wasn’t entertaining; I was lucky to be assigned an incredible director and a great cast who made the play into more than I could have hoped for.
There is a full account of the whole process that led to the play, but it’s freakishly long and boring. I wrote that and I’m keeping it for myself; I don’t recommend it for human consumption. I just wanted to have a good record by which to measure all future periods of stress (“Rescuing my pregnant sister from a burning house with my arm broken in three places? I give it .6 Playfests”).
Also, my stomach’s all better now.
Don’t Say I Didn’t Warn You
The past 48 hours have been the longest, well, 48 hours I have ever lived. In fact, I’m recounting on my fingers right now to make sure I’m numbering them right–it feels like it’s been at least a week since I wrote my last journal entry. Which, coincidentally, is where the whole thing starts. To help me keep things straight, all times are in military.
Shortly after I finished fiddling with the idiotcam©, Ken asked if I wanted to go out somewhere for dinner. Certainly! I said, but as I was flat broke it seemed the possibilities were limited. But wait! I had the free pizza I’d won from Little Caesar’s, didn’t I? Problem solved!
Unfortunately, the bastards at said pizza joint were apparently resentful of having to give away anything at all, and so laced my double slice with a hearty dose of poison. The rest of that night was entertaining, to say the least (which I will), and the fact that I was slinging together an entire toon from script to finish didn’t exactly make things easier. I finally trudged to bed around hour 0100 hours, to begin a series of short naps interrupted by–well, fill in the blanks yourself.
After one such nap, I awoke not long before my alarm was due, and decided to turn it off so it wouldn’t wake up my poor roommates. I then forgot about said precaution and crawled back under the covers. In the words of The Spleen, “Big mistake!” Jon finally woke me up himself when he noticed that it was a good half hour after my planned wakeup call, and while I engaged in The World’s Fastest Shower© David was calling my room to see where, exactly, the hell I was.
We got into Henry’s car only running about the aforementioned half hour behind (but let us not forget that my body was just beginning to make me pay for the pizza). We got to the airport around 0815. I was writing Henry a check of appreciation for the ride when it became clear that yes, in fact, my pen had exploded all over my hand and made me look like some kind of squid molester.
I think it’s to my credit that only then did I start making signs against the Evil Eye.
I set off the beeper at the security checkpoint, of course (foolish, foolish zipper!), but even with all the delays it turned out not to matter–our flight was late and we were routed onto a different jet, an hour behind schedule. Having removed most of the ink evidence from my hand, I covered myself in my coat, shivered and began the practice I’d cite to Matthew repeatedly (and weakly) whenever he checked up on me over the next six hours: hanging tough.
David got the window seat on the way to Atlanta, the bastard.
We’d missed our connection, of course, but things actually began to look up at this point. They put us on the next jet to Mobile–only an hour and a half behind–and meanwhile I bravely consumed a Sprite and four peanut butter crackers. I didn’t actually think I was going to get on the flight, as they waited until roughly every single passenger was on before assigning me a seat. As it turned out, though, that meant I got the window seat in the very first row of the plane.
Allow me to state, for the record, that flying up front–even on a one-hour flight, and especially when you’re slightly feverish–is a very weird thing. I think the stewardess spotted me as a first-time first-class passenger, though I can’t imagine how my ratty khakis and bewildered expression would have given me away. She was even courteous enough to help me stow my carry-ons, and to smile, and to get me a lemonade from the back when first-class passengers were supposed to get soft drinks. I believe I will love her until the day I die.
The fact that our luggage was actually in Mobile can only have been a huge mistake on the part of our airline. I fully expect to have the repercussions hit on our return trip, and it only remains to be seen whether we’ll accidentally be flown to Norway or just get sucked out through the toilet at 29,000 feet.
The three-hour nap David and I got at the hotel was up there with turkey sandwiches as the best thing. Ever.
We registered (David had problems), we ate (I had problems), we went back to the room to unpack our snazzy borrowed laptops, and we arrived at the ballroom just in time for auditions to start.
Yes, This Is Still Going, I Warned You
Auditions were the most heinous display of “AC-ting!” I’d seen since I volunteered to time qualifier auditions, but there was promise here and there. I took notes like “sycophant elephant” and “you can’t kill a roach with a rolled-up newspaper” in hopes of inspiration, which were almost as helpful as they look. Finally, around 2330 hours (central!), they cleared the place out and told the chosen six of us to get to work.
It should be noted that we were all guys, and fate is cruel.
There has been plenty of “well it has been interesting!” content already, I think. The next seven and a half hours, though, take the proverbial cake as the longest stretch of time ever measured by human experience. Let’s recap: I had slept no longer than three hours at a stretch out of the last twenty-four; my digestive system had yet to even apologize for the things it had put me through; the only idea I had was for a zany cross-dressing comedy that involved a baseball cap and a wedding veil; and as I am me I was of course unable to get anything useful accomplished until way behind deadline.
After about five false starts, I finally started on something promising around 0100 hours; the first draft was due for a group read-through at 0300, but when that rolled around I had three pages out of a required ten, and no idea where I was going next with it. The waning half of the night followed a fairly standard cycle: I would write one line, stare at the screen, and get up to walk around for a while to wake up. I couldn’t recite much of the dialogue from my script if I tried, but let me tell you, I could find my way around the second floor blindfolded.
The scripts were due at 0700, and at 0600 I had six pages. By well-established Brendan habit, of course, I finally got down to work when it was clear I wasn’t going to make it, and at 0659 I was done and casting about desperately for a title. David (who had finished at like 0400, the bastard) gave me the nudge I needed, and at 0705 I was hand-numbering the pages of the finished product.
They gave us a break just long enough to lug our bags back to the hotel room, and at the final read-through with the directors I finally came up with a much better title, which I naturally made everybody write in on their own copies. It got a good response, and I got assigned a very funny director, and David and I finally got to go back and get four hours of sleep, and now I’m sitting here finishing the longest journal entry I have ever written before we go to dinner. The performances start at 2200, and even though my script has to go first I am looking forward to this more than I expected. My hands are off–it’s their baby now. And no matter what happens, it’s going to be fun.
That’s all.
Oh, unless you saw my other play and recognize that I recycled like an eco-bandit. In which case: shush.
I’m going to be on a plane very soon. This hasn’t quite settled in my brain yet. I love flying, probably because I get to do it so rarely–the last time I was in a plane was on my way back from Brazil, summer after senior year, when I was exhausted and homesick and weighing 120 pounds. That wasn’t the best flight, actually. But the way down, six weeks earlier, well… of the roughly fourteen hours we spent over ocean and rainforest and cloud, I’d say I spent at least thirteen just looking out the window.
I’m going to be crazy far behind in my classes when we get back late Sunday night, and I’m probably going to be bored once the sound and fury have settled down, and most everyone but Ian and I are going to be drinking heavily at night, and I’m going to miss the chance to copy edit for the paper this week (for which transgression someone has already beaten me severely). Even so, I’m looking forward to this. I keep getting asked if it’s a competition, but if it were I doubt I’d be going. We’re going to be half-killing ourselves just because it’s never been done before, and that gives me kind of shivers I imagine mountain climbers must get.
I need to figure out what books to bring, and also how the hell I’m going to get to the airport. Wish me luck.
So I’m going to Alabama from the 6th to the 10th for my first ever SETC. This is normally where drama majors go to audition for summer stock or apply for tech jobs and stuff; I thought about it, but since I wasn’t ready for the qualifier auditions back in fall I didn’t try out. I wouldn’t be going at all, actually, except I signed up for this new thing and somehow got in. I’m going to be an overnight ten-minute playwright.
I would be nervous about that, but when I think about it, I actually wrote all my scripts for playwriting class the night before they were due anyway. This will probably be the same thing, only with snacks.
Standard update for the dozen or so people who ask me every day if anything new has happened with a certain someone: no. But it is terribly thoughtful of you to ask!
now if there’s a cure for this
we don’t want it; we run from it
I quit running around finals last term, and I just got back from my first attempt at it since then. It’s been at least a month, and it shows, and the cold air is unkind to my raspy secondhand lungs–but I feel better, and I haven’t slipped as much as I thought. Then again, I also have new shoes, so that could be part of it.
Part of KERA (Kentucky Education Reform Act, which went into effect around seventh grade for me) meant that we wrote a lot more in school. I think that’s a good thing. What’s stupid about it, though, is that we were doing the work for nothing. As we got older we started to realize it. I have no doubt that the low scores for our junior KIRIS tests were due not to a lack of ability, but to a lack of caring.
My tracery of KERA results:
- Students began to write more.
- Because this writing was intended to judge teacher ability levels, teachers made students spend time on these pieces instead of regular course work. At the same time, students were not graded for said pieces because they were portfolio-bound. This had two direct results.
- Students were not taught as much useful material.
- Students were taught that it was more important to write more than to write well.
- Students did a great deal of work for which they were not held accountable. They got a wishy-washy level like “apprentice” or “distinguished” for it, but they couldn’t put it on a college application.
- Because it was stressed that students have a wide variety of work available for portfolio assembly, no piece could be thrown away–which, as most teachers translated, meant no criticism.
And that’s what really gets to me about the whole damn thing. We as a generation have not been taught to separate critiques of work from personal criticism, a desperately important distinction that most of us are forced to learn on our own. I think it hurts a lot of people when they get to college, and it’s not their fault.
I’m trying to figure out how to do some sort of Xorph special, since Tuesday (ie Newcomicday) is also, um, Christmas.It’s going to be difficult without the ability to draw anything. Maybe I should do it in ASCII art.
You can’t buy real Christmas lights anymore. You go to Wal-Mart, you find the seasonal aisle in the back corner by the gardening supplies, you expect massive stacks of light boxes. Not so! You can, technically, still buy the traditional tiny-white-bulb strings–but that’s about it. No C9s or 7.5s, not even multicolored small bulbs. Instead we have–yes!–the stupid light extravanganza!
You have your net lights, which are a cheap and stupid way to get out of wading into the bushes. You have your rope lights, which are not only ugly but unwieldy. You have your bubble lights, which are fine, in limited qualities, indoors. And you have truckloads of curtain / icicle lights, which are–I firmly believe this–the will of Satan manifest on Earth.
All of this is meant, essentially, to explain the slightly odd configuration of this year’s Second House on the Left light display. We had a nice multi-colored theme going on, up until I ran out of working colored strings and still had three trees (the big ones, naturally) to go. The aforementioned trip to Wal-Mart produced the aforementioned results, and only by scavenging the clearance rack at Big Lots did we come up with five strings of C9s. Unfortunately, all of them were entirely white.
I got two of the big trees with said white lights, which at least makes for a symmetrical design. The problem was this: the enormously fat tree by the basketball goal (which I have privately nicknamed “Brendan’s Self-Image”) was mostly strung with colored lights already, and needed maybe one more string to top it off. A white string would have to be distributed evenly or look like whipped cream atop a cherry-and-lime jello mold.
This is why I sat on the driveway for twenty minutes today, unscrewing and switching bulbs between one white string and six colored ones.
Experts estimate that I have spent at least six months of my life doing menial, pointless work like that.