Sometimes I wonder why my mother puts up with me. I'm irrational, stubborn, and picky. I seem to actively pursue dysfunctional endeavors, hate being touched, and only like cantaloupe 27 days out of the year. Still, she loves me. For some strange reason, which I can only attribute to her unsound mental state, she unconditionally embraces all of my idiosyncrasies and flaws and "eras" (Foreign-Service-Officer era, Bohemian-carpe-diem-let-hair-loose era, nothing-but-bananas era). And she makes me omelets (when I'm not crusading against eggs).
She's not perfect, at least not in the conventional sense. She doesn't sew (the intention is there), she doesn't like to give her children compliments (that's Oprah's job), and she always decides to (attempt to) be creative during the most sensitive, formative moments in our lives. For the competitive, fifth grade Bake Fair, my mother decided to discover and promote Jell-O. We didn't have any molds in the house, nor did we bother to get any, and she instead rummaged around the kitchen for arbitrary vessels and tea cups and serving spoons in which to freeze the Jell-O, mixed with sliced fruit. We didn't do a good job estimating the fruit to Jell-O ratio, so some of the cups looked like nothing but amorphous gelatinous banana, and others seemed to have infinitesimal flecks of strawberry as mere afterthought.
Except for the frying pan, my mother didn't have anything in which to display this fair contender, so she took out a large, deep pot, in which to steam rice. The flavors were all different, but we couldn't layer the various types as a trifle because we had used a variety of molds, so she simply placed the shapes next to each other. When she was finished, she proudly presented to me her own recipe. I peered down into the bottom of the vessel, covered with wiggling orange, green, and red shapes resembling broken tea cups and serving spoons, laden with sweet, decomposing fruit. I looked back up at her eager face. I thanked her, and from that day on stopped believing in God, because if He existed, she would not have been allowed to play with Jell-O mixes and over-ripe fruit, and inadvertently, my social life.
I didn't win in any of the categories, not even for best futile efforts. One of my friend's mother had made this gorgeous chocolate pudding with violets and dark chocolate shavings, while another friend brought in a tower of cookies, modeled after the New York skyline. My pot-o-gelatin was barely considered.
While my mother tends to ruin my life, she is one of the few who saves it. Whenever I have gotten mad at my mother, I end up angrier at myself, and often retreat in a sort of self-loathing seclusion as I lose equilibrium. Then my mother makes a joke, I make a joke, we laugh at our (my) childishness, and move on. Balance restored. The world goes round again.
Thus, after the Bake Fair, while I was emotionally ravaged by the day's events, I couldn't manage to completely shun the dish. My friends thought it looked weird and unappetizing, and all fleeting notions of embarrassment and social suicide were immediately replaced by a fierce pride and honor. "I love this," I remember saying, as I took several bites of the dish. "It's unique." The tastes of the various flavors of Jell-O and the fruit converged into an explosion of acridity, but I remained firm. I finished half of the dessert myself.
When I came home, I told my mother about the failed dish. She was deeply apologetic and wrung her hands in a sort of despair, and acknowledgement that she'd never be the mother who bakes award winning desserts for school fairs. I hugged her around the middle. "It was good, Mumma. See? Half of it is gone." She hugged me back. "Next time, I'll try to put less fruit. That weighed it down, I think."
I don't know why I put up with her, either.
Wednesday, April 13, 2011
Thursday, April 7, 2011
The Fountain of Youth: Representative Ryan of Wisconsin?
I overslept this morning. My mother shouted my name from the kitchen, informing me my bus was set to leave in four minutes. I took a cursory glance at my phone and literally leaped out of bed, onto the plug of my rarely used hair iron, and half sprinted, half limped to the bathroom. I prioritized parts of my body that needed soaping, threw on neon blue tights (government shut downs render obsolete business casual), accidentally squirted triple doses of antihistamine drops into my eyes, and stopped only to text Patrick something about my weight or my latest food fantasy or something of paramount significance. I was ready in 20 minutes, and even packed some snacks for the day and took my fish oil.
The last time I had to eject myself from bed with Olympian force was the first day of my International Law class, which started at 8:30 in the morning and never ended (until 11:15). I had rushed through perfunctory hygienic obligations before showing up to class 20 minutes late with my shirt inside out.
Today I slept in till 7:46, which is approximately 1:46 College Standard Time.
The last couple of days have been the most riveting in a long time. With the potential government shutdown, I can focus on nothing else but CSPAN, Politico, the New York Times, especially with its spellbinding political updates (the White House apparently is not for the shutdown; who knew?). Though I work in a political office, enmeshed in the current social and economic issues facing our nation, I have not been this charged since the 2008 elections. Then, I would sit in front of the TV all day, partly to take in all of Anderson Cooper’s unparalleled splendor, partly to stay current on the trajectories of each campaign; during my Sacred Texts class I would compare healthcare and marriage platforms of each candidate whilst listening to passages of the Gospel of Thomas, which my professor would read aloud. Once President Obama won the election, I was in a state of euphoric delirium for several months, hung over with pride, rejuvenation, and $3 Trader Joe’s wine. I was constantly charged, blood coursing through my veins, a constant reminder of my vitality.
Blood doesn’t necessarily course through my veins anymore (it seems to have clotted at the site of the failed blood work), but I do feel alive. I feel youthful. Two nights ago I stayed up watching CSPAN till my laptop died; I exchanged trite jokes with my friends that referenced “Boehners” and “ridin Biden,” as well as ideas about fiscal policy and the 2012 election. The only difference was location. I was not with my friends in the quiet lounge, peering at them over my massive laptop, plastered with sticky social statements (literally—stickers). I was still wearing a hoodie, still drew my knees up against my chest, and still ate out of habit and not hunger, but I was sitting alone in my room. My friends were on the other side of the internet. I finally conceded to Zuckerberg’s brilliance; I could transport myself into the 17th floor quiet lounge via Facebook.
The next morning I confessed to my boss that I was a bit delirious from a late night, and I professed a superficial love for Representative Ryan. She agreed and I wangled the permission to follow the news all day, as the self-proclaimed resident expert and senior counsel on the government shut down.
Between cursing the New York Times for paying reporters to issue “news alerts” about the necessity of compromise and eating birthday cupcakes for a colleague (I took it upon myself to eat several, to fuel my new CSPAN obligations), I assisted a constituent in getting surgery to remove a malignant tumor. By 5:00, I was shaking from caffeine, sugar, and happiness for the patient. And by 6:30, I crashed in my French class.
Last night, I meant to do my homework for my creative writing class, since I had foregone my French homework for my conservative fetish the previous night. As I started writing my story, I was immediately distracted (or I opened a new tab myself) by Kristoff’s Op-Ed piece on Congressional pay during the shutdown. I again took it upon myself to disseminate the information, and essentially ravage people’s newsfeeds.
I still haven’t done my writing homework. It’s a difficult assignment. I need more than a couple of hours to accomplish the task.
But the New York Times just reported what agencies would be furloughed and impacted if our broken bi-party system doesn’t reconcile.
And it’s my job to read the news—I just want to be sure the Bengal tigers are still fed.
The last time I had to eject myself from bed with Olympian force was the first day of my International Law class, which started at 8:30 in the morning and never ended (until 11:15). I had rushed through perfunctory hygienic obligations before showing up to class 20 minutes late with my shirt inside out.
Today I slept in till 7:46, which is approximately 1:46 College Standard Time.
The last couple of days have been the most riveting in a long time. With the potential government shutdown, I can focus on nothing else but CSPAN, Politico, the New York Times, especially with its spellbinding political updates (the White House apparently is not for the shutdown; who knew?). Though I work in a political office, enmeshed in the current social and economic issues facing our nation, I have not been this charged since the 2008 elections. Then, I would sit in front of the TV all day, partly to take in all of Anderson Cooper’s unparalleled splendor, partly to stay current on the trajectories of each campaign; during my Sacred Texts class I would compare healthcare and marriage platforms of each candidate whilst listening to passages of the Gospel of Thomas, which my professor would read aloud. Once President Obama won the election, I was in a state of euphoric delirium for several months, hung over with pride, rejuvenation, and $3 Trader Joe’s wine. I was constantly charged, blood coursing through my veins, a constant reminder of my vitality.
Blood doesn’t necessarily course through my veins anymore (it seems to have clotted at the site of the failed blood work), but I do feel alive. I feel youthful. Two nights ago I stayed up watching CSPAN till my laptop died; I exchanged trite jokes with my friends that referenced “Boehners” and “ridin Biden,” as well as ideas about fiscal policy and the 2012 election. The only difference was location. I was not with my friends in the quiet lounge, peering at them over my massive laptop, plastered with sticky social statements (literally—stickers). I was still wearing a hoodie, still drew my knees up against my chest, and still ate out of habit and not hunger, but I was sitting alone in my room. My friends were on the other side of the internet. I finally conceded to Zuckerberg’s brilliance; I could transport myself into the 17th floor quiet lounge via Facebook.
The next morning I confessed to my boss that I was a bit delirious from a late night, and I professed a superficial love for Representative Ryan. She agreed and I wangled the permission to follow the news all day, as the self-proclaimed resident expert and senior counsel on the government shut down.
Between cursing the New York Times for paying reporters to issue “news alerts” about the necessity of compromise and eating birthday cupcakes for a colleague (I took it upon myself to eat several, to fuel my new CSPAN obligations), I assisted a constituent in getting surgery to remove a malignant tumor. By 5:00, I was shaking from caffeine, sugar, and happiness for the patient. And by 6:30, I crashed in my French class.
Last night, I meant to do my homework for my creative writing class, since I had foregone my French homework for my conservative fetish the previous night. As I started writing my story, I was immediately distracted (or I opened a new tab myself) by Kristoff’s Op-Ed piece on Congressional pay during the shutdown. I again took it upon myself to disseminate the information, and essentially ravage people’s newsfeeds.
I still haven’t done my writing homework. It’s a difficult assignment. I need more than a couple of hours to accomplish the task.
But the New York Times just reported what agencies would be furloughed and impacted if our broken bi-party system doesn’t reconcile.
And it’s my job to read the news—I just want to be sure the Bengal tigers are still fed.
Tuesday, April 5, 2011
The Grotesques
I must finally confess: I am a heroin addict. It’s consumed me. My arm is scarred with the trauma of this dependency, of this obsession, and I can think of nothing else.
No, totally kidding. Apparently my arm just can’t handle blood being drawn during yearly routine physicals.
As I gain maturity and lose wisdom, I have come to understand that everyone has a little heroin in their lives. Everyone has a downfall, albeit sweet, delicious, refreshing, and we become completely consumed by these disgraces or defeats. My mother has peanuts and Robitussin. Katherine Millay had her weakly received poetry and her older sister’s shadow. Napoleon had his own power trip and Sarah Palin doesn’t yet realize she has one. But she does. We all do. My heroin is the pain from dysfunction. We constantly battle the immediate sensation of thrill and pleasure, partly derived from a fleeting awareness of our self-erosion. And as we oscillate between this corrosive joy and objective detachment, we become our own follies. We are these grotesques, embodying in every aspect of our lives the trauma to which we have been subjected, or worse, to which we have subjected ourselves, over and over again.
The clean shaven blonde who buys his breakfast at Pret A Manger and the puffy eyed MTA worker who idles by the ticket machine and the voluptuous Spanish mother of two who buys her children $1-books on the street—all of them carry with them an addiction, the burden of their own follies. We walk lifelessly amid scores of other people consumed by this fixation, engrossed in their own powerlessness, as they are continually terrorized and claimed and ravaged by themselves.
At least we can all say we’re heroin chic.
No, totally kidding. Apparently my arm just can’t handle blood being drawn during yearly routine physicals.
As I gain maturity and lose wisdom, I have come to understand that everyone has a little heroin in their lives. Everyone has a downfall, albeit sweet, delicious, refreshing, and we become completely consumed by these disgraces or defeats. My mother has peanuts and Robitussin. Katherine Millay had her weakly received poetry and her older sister’s shadow. Napoleon had his own power trip and Sarah Palin doesn’t yet realize she has one. But she does. We all do. My heroin is the pain from dysfunction. We constantly battle the immediate sensation of thrill and pleasure, partly derived from a fleeting awareness of our self-erosion. And as we oscillate between this corrosive joy and objective detachment, we become our own follies. We are these grotesques, embodying in every aspect of our lives the trauma to which we have been subjected, or worse, to which we have subjected ourselves, over and over again.
The clean shaven blonde who buys his breakfast at Pret A Manger and the puffy eyed MTA worker who idles by the ticket machine and the voluptuous Spanish mother of two who buys her children $1-books on the street—all of them carry with them an addiction, the burden of their own follies. We walk lifelessly amid scores of other people consumed by this fixation, engrossed in their own powerlessness, as they are continually terrorized and claimed and ravaged by themselves.
At least we can all say we’re heroin chic.
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