Star light, star bright

2006-03-03T18:40:00.000-05:00

Write a story, any story. It's what I did.

She walked down the street, her arms piled high with papers. They wobbled precariously in their stack, paper clipped packets and loose fliers teetering like the stacked plates in the sink where just one more spoon might send the whole pile crashing down in a mess of shattered pottery and broken glass. She moved her hands, adjusting them down at the bottom and put her chin on top, trying to sandwich the papers with her body. A car honked somewhere, a few streets away where cars fought with pedestrians for the right of way and one driver vented frustration with the unfavorable situation. She lifted her head to see, an instinct passed down from her hairy ancestors for whom the unexpected sound of a taxi honking could have been a tiger’s growl, a portent of danger long before the beast appeared. As her chin raised from the top layer a wind blew down the avenue, a late autumn breeze laden with the scent of snow, a promise of winter to come, that ruffled the edges of her patterned skirt and the corners of her load and riffled through the space between the leaves, lifting them free of each other to dance for a few seconds, catching the sunshine and glinting a stark white against the city grey. They settled on the ground quickly as the wind moved on to find fresh playmates, ones unsullied by the gum-spotted ground.

She knelt, frantically scooping up papers before a new wind could come and pull them further from her grasp. She turned southward and was greeted by a tanned hand messily clutching a few white papers, their silver paperclips sticking out at odd angles from the bundle. They gathered up the rest of the papers mutely, the man and the woman, silently dedicated to the task. They finished their undignified scampering and stood, looking at each other curiously under guise of adjusting crooked suits and undone buttons, waiting for an exchange of words, like coins worn down from too much use, to end the awkward silence. She pulled a paper from her disorganized pile and a pen from her purse, catching his eye as she did and scrawled a few numbers on the page, and a name, a few symbols more important than all the lines of printed text it had been rescued for, and thrust it at him, her face flushing with the strain of audacity. She walked away.

The two of them walked down a similar street, distinguishable from the first only by the white words on green signs. Neon lights flashed from behind clear glass, calling out to passers by of luxuries available inside, a courtship dance in stasis to any who cared to look, the peacock signs strutting silently in place, flashing their gaudy feathers to the night. They walked into the cold wind, her long black hair slapping against her face and their scarves streaming back behind them in their own dance, twisting and twirling to get away. It blew stray litter into the air and she watched the pieces as she struggled not to be blown away herself. He grabbed her arm and pulled her with him into the walled in space outside a hotel, the reserved space empty of guests. They stood behind the barrier with flushed faces and mussed hair and looked at their still scarves and a smile broke out on her face, a contagious grin laden with strange emotion, the kind that the scientists are still looking for out in the jungles of the Amazon, searching desperately so they might categorize and bottle them, to give them a name and remove the mystery.

He drove while she gazed idly out the passenger window, taking in the languid cows with their soft black eyes and tails that twitched vainly against the crowds of flies that shared the meadows with them. The window was open just a crack, warm air streaming in and mixing with the air conditioned cool. Her eyes drifted open and shut, one hand resting on her stomach and the other tangled in the loose strands of her hair, brushing occasionally against the cool window glass. She turned to him and watched the intent concentration on his face as he watched in turn the pattern of orange dots and stripes on the black tarmac. She struggled for something to say, tense all of a sudden and uneasy in the company of this stranger, though not a stranger at all, with his strong, serious features and thick brows.

“I don’t know,” she said at all, simultaneously at a loss for words and finding the right ones to convey everything. “I don’t know,” she said again, tasting the words as they rolled off her tongue, a coarse mix of fear and uncertainty. He looked at her and she could see him stiffen, starting at his toes and working up to his face. He looked back to the road, necessity taking over, to once again stare at the alternating patterns of dots and dashes, with more than serious written on his face. She watched him for a while until they passed another field, this one devoid of cows and she looked away in surprise when she felt the car slow, his foot slipping off one pedal and onto another, his hands gently maneuvering the wheel to the right. His feet crunched on the dry dirt as he a few feet away from the car, waiting silently for her to join him until she did and they walked until they could no longer see the car, it having hidden itself behind a slight rise while they were moving away. She waited impatiently for him to say something, for him to break the silence which had never before seemed so unbearably awkward, tension created by a few words washing over her while it seemed to drain away from him. She turned to follow his gaze and hers skimmed over a field of corn that swayed gently in the wind, unconcerned with the frantic goings on of the city so far away or the two people standing at the edge of the road, their hearts as heavy as their feet by necessity, so that they would never be blown away in the wind tunnels of their city. The breeze picked up into wind, wind that blew over the field and the two people, people who finally let the wind blow them away.

2006-02-17T17:03:00.000-05:00

I have a free movie pass. Well, not entirely free I’m forced to admit, but close enough that I can call it that and not quite be lying through my teeth. There is a dollar fifty surcharge in all Manhattan theatres and somehow I feel like traveling to an ex-Manhattan theatre would raise the price by more than it would lower it. The question now becomes which movie do I spend my dollar fifty on?

I could see Memoirs of a Geisha. It is, by all accounts, a rather dull, all-too-westernized parody of a good movie. When I first saw the previews I had every intention of seeing this film, but my opinion changed rather quickly once the reviews came out. It being based on a book, and me being rather more book than film oriented, I decided I didn’t want to ruin any chances I had of reading the book impartially. But would it perhaps be worth it for such a meager sum? Eh. We’ll see.

Date Movie, Pink Panther, Final Destination 3? Cheap, campy titles probably full of either forced humor or the characteristic terror implicit in any teenage-death thriller. The only horror I expect from that movie is my own and likewise the only suspense when the movie will finally end. I may as well tack When a Stranger Calls onto this list as well, though I have a feeling it might deserve its own category, something along the lines of ‘Scream meets Scary Movie’ but doesn’t live up to either. Feel free to correct me if I’m wrong, but either these are dreadful movies or these studios all need to find a new advertising company.

Nothing else really seems worth commenting on. There’s Brokeback Mountain, which I saw and loved, but don’t particularly want to see again right now as well as Match Point and Munich. I admit to knowing next to nothing about Match Point, but Munich at least seems a little heavy for the light popcorn movie I’m looking for.

It seems possible that what I want from a movie right now is impossible. Perhaps it is simply too much to have a comedy with substance. Maybe I should just go rent a classic. I think I hear Dr.Strangelove calling my name.

2006-01-30T22:04:00.000-05:00

So, I happen to be taking a writing course right now. Unfortunately it’s required and quite fortunately it’s very much hated so I’m in good company when I want to bitch about it. I think the best two words for it are pretentious and bullshit. The assignment tends to be to “ferret out an idea” from the things we’ve written thus far and write something that explores it in greater depth. The worst part is the professor decides that we should analyze our own work for meaning. That becomes exactly the sort of exercise I have always rebelled against. Now, I fully support searching a work of literature for hidden meanings and themes if the author put them there to be found, or even if they are only a semi-conscious reflection on a certain state of mind. What really gets my goat, however, is when you are set to nitpick something out of a piece that might not even be there.

“The goat gamboled gracefully, its hooves
lightly touching the meadow grass as it
enjoyed the summery day.”

Now, what would you say if a figure of authority had presented you with that? Point out the lack of meter or discernible rhyme scheme? Mention the goat as a symbol of debauchery, a possible metaphor for inebriation, drawing on classical references to Pan? Say that the author had probably never seen a goat in her life? It would all sound very official and you might even get a decent grade. Wrong, though. I love me some goats.

What I am trying to convey through this informal exercise is that quite often there probably is nothing to find in the passage, especially if I wrote it. I didn’t make a deliberate reference to Pan, and the lack of meter is not a literary device to show discord in contrast to the peaceful summer’s day or whatever else it might be taken to mean. It was written, like most if not all, of my assigned writing for that class will be with a minimum of time wasted on obtuse references and a maximum of desire to be done with it. One day I’ll tell that professor what I think of the class.

That will be the day I fail.

Snakes on a plane.

2006-01-22T22:52:00.000-05:00

My roommate and I are like a remake of the Odd Couple, only it’s a reality TV remake sponsored by MTV and cast with girls told they were doing some other show entirely. It’s like they told me I was going to be on a show focusing on the serious, academic side of life, but they’d also have some other shots in there so my adoring public would know I’m not entirely too serious. There would be long montages of me studying – I would put my head in my hands and moan “I can’t do this!” but somehow pull through in the end. The camera crew would follow me to my classes and catch prime footage of me looking distinctly flustered as I couldn’t remember the aorist passive (It’s en, es, e, in case you were wondering) but they would follow that with a shot of me proudly holding up my test results. A+ for Nicolette.

Jen, however, was told they’d be following (and funding her way) through the hottest nightclubs and bars in the city. She’d flash the bouncer a winning smile and they’d let her right on through, thanks in large part to the cameraman shadowing her every move. Straight, attractive men would watch her dance and that one in the corner, the really cute one with the short brown hair and white teeth, would finally work up the courage to approach her and she’d bring him back to the apartment and shoo her shadow away for some private time.

The problem with this scenario is that there are no cameramen following us around, there actually are attractive young men with short brown hair and white teeth, and there’s more fumbling than proud test results. We’re like oil and water, even superficially. Tall, leggy and blond versus not-quite-short curly-haired brunette. We can’t even properly agree on a religion. We coexist, though. I correct her essays and she uses her amazing powers of the falsified identification to make my nights of carousing possible. Luckily near the beginning of the year we came up with a system to stay as separate as two girls in one room can. We divided it. You could put a screen between the two sides of the room and the only reason either of us would have to see the other would be when I walk out. The only thing that’s been a source of contention, aside from arguing about whose hair it is in the sink –

“That’s definitely blonde.”
“No, look, it’s dark.”
“Nope, it’s just wet.”
“Not anymore it’s not.”

– is Everybody Loves Raymond. I don’t like it, she does. Simple solution: she watches it while I’m out of the room or too preoccupied with homework to care.

Next year I get to choose a roommate. That should be fun.