My Babe Left Me

If this were a custody hearing, if I were trying to prove to Child Protective Services that I was, in fact, a fit parent, the fact that my baby didn’t have a name would be the first thing my accusers would bring up. They might allude to “A Child Called It,” and they might use this as ammunition to color me as negligent and abusive. So let me just clear this up right away: Yes, I never got around to naming my baby. Does that look bad? Maybe you had to know the kid to understand why…

My car was huge, bulky, and difficult to maneuver, and its entire backside was covered in bumper stickers. I should’ve counted them, but I never did (chalk it up to negligence); my guess would be about 20, maybe more. They started out just on the bottom bumper, the first one, “girls kick ass,” appearing ten years ago, when the car was just an infant. When the bumper was all filled up (it didn’t take long), the stickers crept up along the left side of the license plate, and when that was full, they tiled the right side as well. There was a square, blue and white “PEACE” on the left corner of the bumper, where there was a dent from my sister’s years as an amateur driver. In fact, there were dents on all four corners of the car, and two on the front bumper, like dimples, from where my dad backed into it. I never got any of them fixed, partially because I was lazy and didn’t want to pay for it and partially because I thought the rough-and-tumbled look balanced out the overwhelming number of liberal, hippy-dippy peace stickers.

My mom was the one who bought the car when it was new, and she drove it until she bestowed it upon my sister, who drove it for a couple years, between getting her license and moving to Chicago for college. And then it was mine— this hefty black SUV with (at that time) at least 15 bumper stickers. It was impossible to pass under the radar with a car like that. If you saw it on the road or parked somewhere, there was no question as to where I was. At school, when it was parked somewhere it wasn’t supposed to be, the dean knew exactly who to punish. It attracted attention from war-mongers at gas stations and from bikers on the road. Once I made the mistake of parking it in the main parking lot at my job and was teased about it for the rest of the summer by my conservative boss.

Eleven years and 119,000 miles is a lot for a car, even an SUV like mine, and the wear and tear of daily use was evident, even besides all the dents. You had to floor either the gas or the brakes to elicit any sort of response; the antenna was permanently stuck at half-mast; the sunglasses compartment above the rear view mirror had fallen off. I only washed the car three times during the two and a half years I drove it. I once spilled four grande Starbucks lattes on the floor of the passenger seat, and when I opened the car door, the milky liquid spilled out of the car and made a stain on the black plastic door molding that looked like someone had vomited out the passenger side window.

But even with all that, I loved my car. It hauled me and my friends and siblings and parents and, even though I could never really master putting the back seats down, Lyle’s bike. It took me everywhere I wanted to go— to Poway for pool parties and sleepovers, Scripps Ranch for taco nights and babysitting, Hillcrest for coconut shrimp and organic pizza, Pacific Beach for sushi and curry and thrift stores, Mission Hills for school projects and parties and more sleepovers, La Jolla for coffee and baklava, Rancho Santa Fe for movie marathons, Carlsbad for outlet malls and flower fields, and to Laguna Beach and back, 70 miles each way, twice a week for an entire summer. It waited for me in the school parking lot until way after dark, after the gates were all locked, when it was one of two or three or four cars left in the lot. It took me over Soledad at night.

And now it’s on the road to Minneapolis, where the deed will be transferred over to my step-brother, Justin. It will endure the winter for the first time in its life, its insides will freeze and rust, and Justin will probably remove the bumper stickers. Driving around with a sticker reading “girls kick ass” would just be embarrassing.

You name cars like a blue 2007 Jetta or Honda Civic, cars that are just cars. You give them names to help form a connection, to make this car seem like yours, to distinguish it from all the other blue 2007 Jettas or Honda Civics. But my car— there are no other 1999 black Toyota 4Runners—not in California and not in Minnesota—with a back hatch as colorful as a rainbow.

Some stuff worth posting about

1. GLEE

The first I ever saw of Glee was that clip that circulated on YouTube circa October 2009, that one of the football team doing the “Single Ladies” dance. I thought it was cute and original and funny, if not entirely intelligent and/or worthwhile. I ended up watching the series, though, because I had nothing better to do with my time. There were 22 episodes in the season, the last of which just aired last night, and during approximately 17 of those episodes, I found myself asking: Why am I watching this again? Natalie’s reportage perfectly captured everything that’s wrong with the show, so I won’t go into that, but despite all its shortcomings, I kept watching. I guess I just don’t like giving up, at least not on important things like television shows. But, after much circumlocution I have come to my point: The season finale almost made up for the whole season’s general terribleness. The finale was, yes, predictable and cheesy and rather stupid, but it was also heartfelt, funny, quick, and only sparsely ridiculously unrealistic. So I guess this is me making one small stance for Glee, and Tuesday’s season finale was it.

2. MY INTERNSHIP, THREE DAYS IN

Highlights include: $2 Taco Tuesday, dropping $1500 of company money on a 21.5-inch iMac, wearing outfits that don’t revolve around Option B and often involve heels, designing ads, getting Adobe CS4 on my laptop for free, my co-workers.

Lowlights include: carpal tunnel.

3. THE FIRST YEAR SEMINAR I WILL, WITH ANY LUCK, BE TAKING IN THE FALL

Extremely specific, utterly useless… does it get any more college-y?

Dead Technologies
The magic lantern, zoetrope, passenger pigeon, typewriter, and Brownie camera live with us today in different forms. These technologies may be dead, but they are not buried. What can we learn about the tools of the present and possibilities for the future by studying the innovations of the past? In this seminar, we will approach research as a creative process and mine historic technologies, works, and documents in preparation for our writing. We will comb through ephemera, visit an archive and a typewriter museum, learn modern tools for video editing and image manipulation, build our own microphones, and develop a magic lantern performance.

(from http://www.middlebury.edu/academics/fys/courses/offerings?catalog_term=term%2F201090)

-hannah

Thinking is bad for you.

The human mind is the most complex structure in the known universe. While scientists have hit many recent milestones studying everything from molecular manipulation to repairing the human body to interstellar communication, the human mind and its vessel, the brain, remain largely shrouded in mystery. Humans have meta-cognition, that is the ability to reflect on one’s own thoughts, and as a result can create alternate realities in their minds. A very concrete example of one of these alternate realities is a dream. As a human sleeps and processes the day’s information, he or she will experience an alternate reality, based (sometimes loosely) off of the information being processed and the information already in storage. Trying to recreate a dream in reality is usually impossible, not only because only one out of twenty can be recalled, but also because the physical world has concrete rules which cannot be bent outside the mind. That is the key difference between the physical world and realities forged by the human brain: rules. Of course, dreams are not the only form of fantastic realities created by one’s imagination. The phenomenon has many different levels ranging from dreams (waking or asleep) to simple thoughts. The ability to create alternate realities may seem like something that would come in conjunction with limitless possibilities, but just as the physical world has its own laws, such as the laws of physics (gravity, inertia, etc.), which the mind can bend in it’s own phantasms, the mental worlds have rules of their own.
Humans experience these phantasms of their own mind’s creation through something commonly referred to as “the mind’s eye” which (despite it’s name) can hear, feel, see, taste and smell the alternate realities or conceptions at varying intensities. Note that the “mind’s eye” has all the senses humans have in the physical world, and none more. A mind’s ability to conceive, however fantastic the conceptions are, are always based, however loosely or indirectly, on experiences from the physical world. For example, a human can mentally blend colors that he or she has actually seen to see through the mind’s eye a color he or she has not, but can never invent a color outside the visible color spectrum (from the deepest violet to the brightest red).
While any mental image created must be based off of real world experiences, the reverse is entirely untrue. Direct mental communication is (to date) impossible, ideas must pass though the physical world before they can be transferred from one mind to another. Also, physical objects usually last longer than ideas, and as such, giving material form to ideas could prolong their lifespan. Also, sensing the physical world through the senses of the body is a much more tangible and potent experience than sensing a mental world through the senses of the mind’s eye. The only way that a mental universe can make it’s way into the physical universe is through the physical ministrations of the body. It is from this endeavor, the struggle to give physical form to thoughts and ideas through use of the body, that mankind’s greatest invention was born: Art.
Art is an effort to transfer an idea, a piece of an alternate reality created within the mind, to the physical world. Virtually all art starts as an idea, a thought, and was given physical life by an artist. An idea’s physical life has many forms: pictures, poems, sculptures, music, and dance to name a few. While some artists made their pieces realistic, trying to represent their ideas directly , such as Leonardo de Vinci, others tried to resemble an idea less diluted with by realism, like Salvador Dali. While the complexity of great artist’s minds are difficult to speculate on, it is clear from the differences in their artwork that they were working to express different things, and if not they were at least using different methods.
The word “dream” is used to describe aspirations and ambitions, because after all ambitions are alternate realities synthesized by the mind, ie. dreams, which we want the physical world to become. If people work to realize their dreams, they have become artists on a much larger scale than the common definition of the word. They work to bring their mentally synthesized alternate realities, their dreams, into reality, though not through an object like a painting or a sequence like a dance or song, but through themselves and the world itself. The problem with this or any kind of art is truly great pieces of art, which expresses with relative accuracy the idea an artist wishes to convey or produce.
Oscar Wilde once said that “life imitates art far more than art imitates life”. To analyze and ascertain the validity of those words is a more daunting task than it originally appears. It’s truth depends on the exact definition among the many of the words “life”, “art”, and “imitate”, and is further skewed by the cyclical nature of the two subjects being compared. For example, the quote could mean many things: “People look like statues more than statues look like people” “The ecosystem follows the trends of pop culture more than pop culture follows the trends of the ecosystem.” “Our perception of the events surrounding us has more effect on the world than what actually happens” “The mind effects reality more than reality effects the mind”. Each interpretation has the same cyclical nature inherited from the original quote. Life will influence art which will, in turn, influence life, and the cycle will continue. To say which is more important, the chicken or the egg, is meaningless, for they are both essential to the cycle mutual influence.
All of these are debatable either way, however the points for debate change with each interpretation. Before we begin to analyze the validity of the statement “life imitates art far more than art imitates life”, we have to select a specific interpretation for debate. Assuming life means the physical universe and art means concrete works of art, the argument could be made that Life affects art more, because all art is based off of something in life, where not everything in life is based of something in art. If art means the everyday dreams and fantasies of people, and life means their everyday lives, the opposite argument could be made, assuming that people’s lives are the sum of their actions and their thoughts guide their actions.
Bored of this.

Warren

Hypocrisy

We’ve always been told to practice what we preach. Parents who break there own rules have long been a source of infuriation for those subject to their rule. But is it so wrong to hold your child to a higher moral standard than yourself?

Almost every day, I tell my sister never to listen to bad music, swear, drink, smoke, do drugs, to be ever wary of boys, to go to church every sunday. I tell her because I believe she needs to hear it. Without someone yelling at her daily not to do bad things, how is she going to know not to do bad things?

I try to pass some of my knowledge on to her, try to prepare her for the tempations and pressures to do stupid and morally objectionable things that come with being a high school student. I tell her above all, she needs to know what her own morals are and follow them, no matter what pressure there is to do the opposite.

But is it right that my own personal morals are not quite what I’d like hers to be?

I’ve fallen over before, we all have. And when I do, what am I supposed to do? NOT swear? Come on. I listen to violent and vulgar music, evinced by the fact that I have to skip every third song on the playlist on the way to school so she doesn’t hear it. I haven’t been to church in months. I tell her not to do these things, not because I think they themselves are bad, but because of the attitudes they carry, the things they lead too.

If you listen to your favorite artist swear 20 times a day, you will start swearing. Then if you start swearing, you start hanging out with kids who also swear, start to think doing bad things (like swearing) is cool. Later, they invite you to a party. There people want you to drink that beer, then take that shot, then smoke that weed, then pop that X. Next thing you know, you’re high in an alley at 3:00 AM, gun drawn, mugging someone to fund your next fix.

If I think my sister can be influenced, how can I expect myself to be immune to “bad influences” even though I am immersed in them? I used to gasp in horror and dismay when someone said “Oh my god”. Now I find myself a member of a facebook group called “FUCK THE POLICE”.

I guess that makes me a hypocrit, but is that so wrong? I tell her to be morally stricter than I am, because I want her to be better than I am, and that’s because I love her.

10 Lessons From a Jay-Z Concert

1. OBEY THE ARTIST

When Jay-Z asks you to put your diamond in the air, do it. When he asks you “Jigga what?” and “Jigga who?” you answer him. When he asks you to chant “Hova! Hova! Hova!,” you do it. When he says “put your damn hands up,” for God’s sake put your damn hands up! Respect J-Hova.

2. DANCE

No lame stillness. If you are, just as a random example, a very tall girl with masses of curly hair and your mother’s large backpack from the 1980s, and you are dancing like a crazy person, you will get plenty of room for yourself. You will need that room when, once Jay-Z begins to sing “Empire State of Mind” and you realize that you are going to college in New York City and thus are also in an empire state of mind, you jump a foot in the air and throw your entire body into spastic motions similar to when the Na’vi work it out at the tree of souls.

3. YOU HAVE NO PROBLEMS

Jay-Z may have 99 problems, but when you are watching his show, you don’t have any at all. His rendition of “99 Problems” may, in fact, be the most fantastic four minutes of your life. You may, like some random person I saw (not myself) be so energized by the song that when Jay-Z says “Hit me!,” you will emphatically hit yourself, and wish he would say it again sooner because it was such an adrenaline rush.

4. LIGHTS IS BLINDING, YOU NEED SIDE BLINDERS

You should not look at the mean, exhausted security guards with the incredibly bright lights. You may be innocently looking down one second, and then be instantly blinded by their insane flashlights. Also, I believe that in general, people with blinking gloves/glow bracelets/glow necklaces are not to be trusted.

5. NEVER, EVER LEAVE A JAY-Z CONCERT EARLY

Sure, you miss the insane Coachella parking lot traffic, but you will also miss Beyoncé singing an eighties classic.

6. DON’T SIT IN THE MIDDLE OF THE CROWD

While Coachella is an exhausting experience and the desire to sit is perfectly understandable, it sadly does not tend to work out in the middle of a crowd. You will be horribly trampled by drunken fools.

7. JAY-Z IS MORE IMPORTANT THAN EVERYONE ELSE (EXCEPT MAYBE BEY)

He already knows it, so why shouldn’t you? Hence, if you were thinking of attending any other show, you should just change your mind. Deadmau5 who?

 8. JAY-Z WILL MAKE SOMEONE LOVE HIP-HOP

His brilliance completely converted my friend Marie, a girl who had never heard any of his songs besides “99 Problems,” and probably thought “H to the Izzo” was gibberish. She originally just stood there at the Jay concert, lackluster as a wilting flower, only slightly moving her head. But once Jigga got five or six songs into the show, she loved it. His power transcends musical taste and preference.

9. YES, JAY-Z IS OLD

But don’t bother telling me what I already know when I’m trying to enjoy his glorious performance.

10. JAY-Z SHOWS, NOT CONCRETE JUNGLES, ARE WHAT DREAMS ARE MADE OF.

Duh.

Tomas

I have a habit of making friends that aren’t my age. I don’t know my new friend’s last name, so for now we will just call him Tomas. Tomas was born in Kenya, but he recently sauntered into my life without much of my say in the matter. During the summer, I would see the same African man walk into the Pannikin every Sunday, order an extra large coffee, and dump in a little soy milk and plenty of sugar. I would greet him warmly, and Ryan would go outside for a smoke with “the African,” but that was about it. Then one day I was reading outside on my break when Tomas came by. He asked me what book I was reading, and when he discovered it was Heart of Darkness, his face lighted up. He said that he had been wanting to read that one, so I promised to lend him my copy when I was finished, then I went back to work.

I quickly forgot about this promise, but Tomas did not. He came back a few weeks later, after I had given up on the novel and lost my copy in the airport. I was eating lunch when he walked into to the Pannikin. “Look at you, hiding behind your food” he said in half-jest as he left the cafe. Needless to say, I went home and rifled through boxes until I found my sister’s Heart of Darkness to give him the next week. When I gave him the book, we embraced, and some seal of friendship formed at that moment

Tomas does not just spend his Sunday mornings lounging around downtown La Jolla; he runs a vegan Kenyan food stand at the farmers’ market, and comes to the Pannikin after a long day of work. The next step of my friendship with Tomas began with another debt.  Another week, he playfully suggested that I help out at his stand, and obligingly, I accepted. I thought that he was joking, but two weeks later, he walked into the coffee shop with the same half-jesting demeanor. “For two weeks, I’ve been waiting for you” So the next Sunday, I walked into his stand prepared for anything

For a few of months now, I have been working together with Tomas at the La Jolla market. I sauté collard greens and okra, and dole out the delicious food in heaping servings. But the most exciting activity are the conversations that I share with Tomas each week. He radiates warmth, and his toothy grin invites both jokes and conversation. He easily kindles friendships, and he holds tightly onto his bonds. He is also a philosopher. When I  asked him once about the profitability of his stand, he responded with a quote from Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar. “When they cry” he said “I have wept.” Tomas does not always make money, and accustomed to loss. Just important as profit are his friends and customer Culture is the topic that most interests Tomas, but our conversations have verged into race and war. English is Tomas’ third language, but his eloquence is somewhat startling. He has an intelligence that is too deeply rooted for language to constrain

This Tuesday I met Tomas for coffee at a cafe near his home in South Park. I sat outside and he walked up to the coffee house with a broad smile on his face. He bought me a coffee and  we then parked ourselves outside on a bench in the sun. There, we listened to East African Radio on his computer. He translated the Swahili, and explained the political background to raging debate on Kenya’s vice-president. Eventually, he closed his computer so that we could “chit-chat,” And again we broke into a rambling philosophical/political conversation. When it was time to leave, Tomas offered to drive me home in his 1979 Toyota pick-up truck. The car barely reached peak of Mt Soledead, but Tomas was smiling all the time. I left the car, and then watched my new friend set off, back to North Park

Silly Little Thing

I’ve been trying to write for the past few hours. Perhaps I’m dry on inspiration, perhaps I’m a terrible writer who only occasionally had a few decent ideas, perhaps the Muse has simply left me. But in any case, a blog analyzing Lady Gaga’s combination of low culture and high art was astonishingly dry, a record of my recent college trip was stunningly boring, and a Nicholas Sparks satire was exceedingly repetitive. All of them could work, all of them may be posted at a later date, but for now, in plain language, they suck inappropriate body parts. Perhaps the Coachella music festival and the mythical senior prom will provide me with some material in the coming weeks, but for now, my well of words is dry as the desert in Indio, CA.

But writing about having nothing to write about seems to be working for me. The well seems to be trickling, even if it’s just sending out silly metaphors. So I’ll roll with it. I think I’m going to pull a Warren and think, if not out loud, online, just sort of rambling and typing as things come.

I’m tired. I’ve been traveling. It seems as though I was gone for fifty years, even though it was only nine days. It still feels a bit discombobulating being at home, especially now that I’ve decided where I’m going to college, now that I actually know where I’m going to live for the next four years. I’ve decided to attend New York University, and ever since I made that decision I get a little giddy when I see glimpses of the city. Watching the “How to Make It In America” song titles sort of makes me feel like a fizzing glass of champagne, all full of excitement and bubbles.

I can’t sleep. I’m stressed about graduation requirements to fulfill, things to do and people to see all before I leave on Thursday for Coachella. I feel jittery. This whole entry is starting to sound like I’m on cocaine. Perhaps I should say adieu. Apologies for the mediocrity.

What’s been plaguing me (in honor of Pesach)

Tonight, I attended a Passover seder hosted by my father and step-mom. It was a pretty small ordeal—just me, my dad and step-mom, Michelle (adviser to EIE) if she weren’t so popular, and one other couple, Dean and Suzanne. My dad went to high school with Suzanne, back in Pittsburgh, and they recently reconnected at a reunion. I don’t think they were the best of friends when they were in high school, but I guess it’s pretty rare to find one of your high school classmates living in the same city (that isn’t the city in which you went to high school) on the opposite side of the United States. Suzanne and my dad have since become friends, and she and Dean seem like a lovely, happy couple and perfectly pleasant dinner company.

All of which was just a round-about way to get to this point: How the hell is it possible to stay friends with my friends from high school? Suzanne isn’t the only person from high school my dad still talks to; I think there are two or three other guys with whom he’s still in regular contact. And I’m pretty sure he’s in the minority, as far as 61-year-olds who still talk to their high school friends.

It’s different now, easier, with Facebook. And at least until we graduate college, we’ll all be coming back to San Diego on a regular basis, for breaks and summers and whatnot. But what about after college? People will move and their addresses will change and their phone numbers will change and they won’t be coming back to San Diego all that regularly anymore.

This weekend, my friend Katie came down from Portland to stay with me over her spring break. I know her from a summer program I did at Northwestern last summer, and since the summer, I’ve gone to Portland once and she’s come down here once. We talk on the phone and video chat a good amount, but there are nights when I told her I would call her but I’m`too tired or too busy to talk. It takes an incredible amount of effort to keep her updated on my life, and me on hers, and that’s just one person! When Katie was here, we went up to Laguna Beach to visit another friend from Northwestern who lives in LA. He lives only a two-hour drive away, and this was the first time I’d seen him since the summer. If I can’t manage to keep in touch with two people, how can I do so with, say, 10 or 15 people?! It’s impossible. And even the people who I’m not close enough to call up and chat, but the people I see every day and go to class with and chat with and make jokes with. I’ll probably never see them again!

This is actually the single most annoying blog in the history of blogs.

Sorry.

- Hannah

Almost Famous Proof*

A few weeks ago my mom and I drove up to Los Angeles, more specifically, Santa Monica, on a whim. We had been there during Thanksgiving break and it is one of the few gems in a city that I don’t find, as a whole, appealing. We spent our time walking along the boardwalk and shopping in Venice Beach.  On this visit, we did not visit Beverly Hills, where I do most of my celebrity prowling. We did, however, flirt with inland Los Angeles, and drive east to Del Mano Gallery on Westwood Blvd. I had heard grumbling at Teavana of a showcase of a few impractical but exquisite teapots, artist: Tania Radda.

Upon arrival, we noticed a crowd of onlookers near the entrance of the gallery snapping shots of something or someone at the door. I noticed my pace inadvertently speeding up. I began to imagine who was walking into the gallery. When we reached the door, a man outside told my mother to admire the Derek Weidman pieces because he had just entered the gallery. I assumed that was who caused the uproar at the door as I had no gage for the level of fame of these artists.

In room four, after impatiently waiting for my mom, who always takes her sweet time admiring pieces, I found the tea pots. Only a couple of teapots were displayed, but they were immensely creative and worth the visit. “How much do you think one of these babies costs?” I whispered to my mom.

“Sorry to interrupt,” said a woman admiring the pieces a few feet away, “but I believe they are in the ballpark of $2,000.” My knees began to shake, not because of the atrocious price, but because the blonde woman to my right was Kate Hudson. I felt like the blood was draining out of my body. My hands began to shake and my body felt ridiculously cold in a room set at 72 degrees. “Oh! Thank you!” I said in a tone I didn’t know I possessed. “That’s a reasonable price for any tea lover,” I continued. She laughed! I didn’t comprehend what I had said until after it spilled out of my mouth, but I amazed myself with my impromptu sarcasm at such a crucial moment. “Are you a tea lover?” she asked me with a grin that was undeniably her mother’s, Goldie Hawn. “I am, I actually heard about this artist at a tea store.” “She visits the store religiously,” my mom said in a surprisingly calm voice. I assumed based on my mom’s reaction that with age comes the realization that celebrities are people too. “I love tea but sometimes it doesn’t give me the energy that coffee does.” My lips quivered as I smiled at her and said, “That’s very true.” She smiled back and said, “Enjoy the rest of your day.”

I was in shock. I wondered if I experienced an aneurysm or a lapse in sanity. Her voice was exactly as it was in her movies and during her interviews with Oprah. Though she always appears genuine and friendly on TV, I was still surprised by her willingness to talk to pedestrian people.

 As she smiled at me and began to turn away, I had a grand urge to trouble her for an autograph. I knew a photo was out of the picture because the gallery didn’t allow cameras. I thought if I began to ask I would startle her from the excitement in my voice that I was completely unable to control, but I didn’t ask. I reasoned with myself later that she probably has a greater respect for me because I wasn’t her typical run-in. It wouldn’t have been bizarre to ask for the autograph; even my mom asked me later why I hadn’t requested one. There was this huge elephant in the room, because it was clear that she knew that I knew that she was who she was, so I wasn’t concerned that she didn’t feel recognized. Maybe I was too shy, or maybe I was just living in the moment and didn’t feel the need to have proof of the meeting. What is an autograph good for? Absolutely nothing? To sell on EBay? To make yourself feel special? To give yourself bragging rights? I didn’t really know why I didn’t muster up the courage to ask, but now I consider buying one of the teapots, just for proof.

* A Work of Fiction