Tidbits: April Edition

I've been having a bit of an issue with time. It seems as if I've been thinking that the past two weeks were April, despite April only coming upon us since yesterday. This must be because of school. I blame school. I have more papers on my office desk than I know what to do with, student conferencing, and story revisions: April is a race to finish!

After scouting out some blogs over the last couple weeks, I've been giving some thought to the posts bloggers sometimes do where they list or talk about some of the discoveries they've made on the internet. I really like this. It's like show and tell, but better because you're not in grammar school and having to stand in front of a chalkboard.

So I think that I'm going to try something out like that and posting it at the beginning of each month. So here we go!

Picture/Photo Find

Something I Did

April Fool's Day, indeed. The cruelest joke played on me yesterday was finding out that my university doesn't have a Ticketmaster anymore. If you've ever bought concert tickets, you know how much easier it is on the wallet to go pick them up than ordering them online (actual venue or Ticketmaster booth). Well, considering that the venue is an hour away and there are no nearby music stores, I put my trust in the whispered rumors and blindly ran to the Marshall Center after teaching classes for the day.

I burst into the building and ran to the information desk. A lone girl sat behind it and she smiled at me when I approached.

Me: Can you tell me where the Ticketmaster is?

Her: Oh. We don't have one.

Me: What?

Her: The school took it out. We don't have one anymore.

Me: ;_;

Or something like that. So I dashed back to my office, still managing at the same time to text my frustrations to some sympathetic friends. I woke up my computer, took a deep breath, and tried not to cringe when the convenience fees popped up on screen. I was brave. I clicked away. What did I buy?

Owl City concert tickets.

Song I Can't Stop Repeating

"My Hands Are Shaking" by Sondre Lerche.

A Writer Thing

Yesterday I attended USF's 2011 Curtain Call.

Curtain Call is a reading at the end of the year for graduating MFA students in the program. Friends, family, undergrad students and writers and other supportive faculty come to hear the graduates read from their theses. The MFA professors gave great introductions of each graduate, both humorous and heartfelt.

Again, this event took place in the Marshall Center, but this time my walk over was calm and peaceful. The air was cool from the sunset. I wore my green, flower-print bag over my shoulder and felt incredibly happy that I didn't have to lug my netbook or lunch box with me this time. I packed everything away before going. There were plenty of people already there when I arrived. I bought a homemade booklet of sample writing from the four graduating MFAers - the money for the book went to Japan Second Harvest.

The four totally awesome writers who, I got to know a bit during my first year here, are:

Bryan Rice

Brandon Petit

Jared White

Alicia Thompson

It was wonderful to hear their words, in some cases for the first time for me. Each one is incredibly talented and I'm sorry to see them go - but that's what grad school is like, I guess. The time we spend studying creative writing here is so short but extremely powerful. To think that in two years, I'll be standing up there. Woah. So surreal. I tried to find links for each; please check out their writing if you get the chance.

Video I Watched Too Many Times

So I found this Japanese ad that, I confess, I don't understand language-wise. I don't speak or read Japanese, though I consider anyone who can terribly amazing. I wish I could do that. I'm horrible at language learning at the start, haha. But I got the point of this video: it's to show how wonderful it is to read. How you can get lost in the pages of a book and how books might lead to other new adventures (like meeting cute guys?). Japanese books are incredibly cute too. I love paperbacks and these look almost as soft as teddy bears. Yes, yes, I'm a bibliophile, haha.

Food I'm Craving

Macarons. I've never ever had any before. This fact is bumming me out.

Have a great week, dear readers!

Skeleton Party

So I kinda like skeletons.

There's something funny about them. I call them hilarious, charming, and cute. Of course, I'm sure they're anything cute about a rotting body... but when I look at one of those plastic skeletons in a science classroom, I smile. I can't help it.

I found the picture above here at We Heart It (I think I'm terribly obsessed with that site). There's something magnetic about it. I like how the skeletons are so tiny, and the red-hatted one had his hand on the yellow-hatted one's leg. What could it mean? They both look like guy skeletons to me, but I could be wrong. They're sitting stiffly, as if their mother skeleton is forcing them to pose for the camera.

Mommy Skeleton: Now smile!

Yellow: But Brad's touching me. Tell him to stop.

Red: I'm not touching him. He's lying.

Mommy Skeleton: Look, we're not cutting the cake until you sit still. We need a nice picture for Daddy, considering he wasn't seen you in 126 years. If they dig him up this year, you probably won't want him to scold you.

What do you think of when you look at it?

In my Who Am I? section, I mention that I like weird things. Including tap-dancing skeletons. There's a story behind this. My friend and I were trying to study one night, bemoaning the fact that Halloween was on its way and we didn't have the time to go out. We kept the television on one of the lower channels and were strangely entranced by an old Halloween special where old celebrities (none I knew of) got together in costumes to dance and sing. The show was incredibly corny. My friend and I dropped our books and laughed hysterically. At one point a group of skeletons came out and tap danced. It was brilliant. I wiped the tears out of my eyes and thought, without a doubt, that the corniness was so high that it could actually be considered good.

With that being said, I like watching old horror films. And I mean really old. This small hobby has led me to my silent film favorites such as The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (which I referenced in my Men of Honor post) and Nosferatu. Other black and whites continue to be a lot of fun, and one of them has a knee-slapping (yes) skeleton moment towards the end of the film. I highly recommend you click the video and enjoy it. Rest assured I cry-laugh every time I do :)

The Versatile Blogger Award!

So, the other day (or should I say, weeks ago) I checked the blogs I follow and found that Melee from The Midnight Train of Thought was wonderfully kind in bestowing "The Versatile Blogger Award" upon little I Wear Milk Crowns. I was super excited about it and couldn't wait to follow up with my answering post - until Spring Break arrived and I rode the waves of the Carried Away scent. Ah.

So school's back in session. There was a power outage this morning that left me, understandably, upset because the paragraph in one of my stories that I had just edited was lost to the infinite blackness that was my office. Only the emergency lights from the hallway offered refuge. I was so disgruntled that I stayed in the dark office until the lights came on twenty minutes later. Of course, my paragraph was forever lost.

So I decided to do something fun to take my mind off of it, something I had been meaning to do. This post. Here's the conditions for the award:

1. Thank the person who loved you enough to bestow this gift.

2. Share seven things about yourself.

3. Bestow this honor onto 10 newly discovered or followed bloggers - in no particular order - who are some way.

4. Drop by and let your ten new friends know you admire them.

I think I've told Melee, thank you, but if I haven't: THANK YOU! I'm honored!

Alas! The sacred seven facts:

1. You can bribe me to do almost anything by offering me Peeps.

2. I'm still struggling to find my place in the world of Disney Princess identification. I used to love Ariel the best as a kid, and now it's Sleeping Beauty (though I confess it's mostly because of Prince Phillip) but I know in my heart that I'm actually most like Belle in personality. I love books and spacing out, and would probably have no issue with talking candlesticks and clocks.

3. When it comes to writing, I tend to overexert myself. I take on multiple projects at once and even feel like, while doing those, that I need to do more. This surprisingly does not result in unfinished short stories and the like, but it does mean I have way too much on my mind. My friends cock their eyebrows and sometimes slap me when they hear me talk about a new project. They mean well, haha.

4. I've ridden on a hot air balloon. It was only ten minutes, but it was one of the best moments of my life.

5. There are two likely reasons for me being crabby. 1) Heat. Hot weather. Not even mints can make me forget the sweat and sluggishness. 2) I'm working on a story in my head. Most likely I'm thwarted from jotting notes down on a computer or piece of paper. Other times I just want to be left alone to mentally work on a particular scene or dialogue.

6. I dream of buying a mustard yellow pea coat someday. I have strange expectations that, when I do find one, it will mean that I've achieved something great in my life. Like a marker or something.

7. I love coincidences. Because I don't believe that they are coincidences. I love whatever it is that makes me stumble upon a long-lost childhood book in a used bookstore or lets me here my favorite song while I'm strolling around the grocery store. Those strange moments of timeliness, like straight out of a movie script. I feel one with the universe in those moments, haha.

I'm still relatively new on the blog scene, but I found some that I absolutely love to read:

1001 Ways to be More Lovely

ALPHA'S Bill Karalius

Blushing Ambition

Esther-FromtheSticks

Bubble World

Francis Spoke

End Of March

Hello Enaam

Meaghan Makes

Nerd Armada

Carried Away

The air is thick with whimsy. The scent is heavy and sweet; I can feel it collect on my tongue as I try to catch clouds. They drift away from me, crawling towards the end of the world with such determination that I can't help but feel in awe. Come back clouds, I call, come have tea with me and tell me stories of what you've seen. They won't come down. They've promised the Sun and Moon to remain silent and unobtrusive. But they shower me with sparkling powder that makes my skin glow and my veins pop with color.

I left my shoes behind a long time ago. They were cute little things, leather with wire shoelaces, but they cut the backs of my heels. They were not made for land, but they hardly deserved the sky either. They're in the conserve behind my house, placed neatly next to my polka-dot backpack and tin of mints.

A street vendor was a curly mustache had come into my life as briefly and nonsensically as a Roald Dahl plot device; he sold me six balloons for a pack of gum and a hair ribbon. He told me to wait until I got home to tie the balloons around my wrist. Instead, I did it right there and drifted away. I bobbed over my house and kicked off my earthly items, watching the plants try and catch them and my dog barking and wagging her tail from inside the screened-in pool area.

The balloon turned to swans and they carried me higher, faster, and the strings multiplied and formed a net around my body. I found a pair of goggles in my penny-sized purse and strapped them on. I sat back in the string net and stared up at the swans who, in a past life where I may have had to stitch nettle-sweaters in silence, could have been my lost brothers.

There's only the sky. Endless blue, but not the kind that's full of salt and rainbow fish. This blue is pure; the air up here is gauzy. It tickles your throat. There's too much and too little and the winds each have their own names and up here, only up here, can they whisper them to you.

Somewhere below a boy is waiting for us to land. He wipes his glasses with a green cloth and keeps watching the skies. Consulting his compass, a trinket from childhood, he knows that I'll soon be landing. The compass doesn't point north. It points to the heart.

Spring Break is finally here. It's just begun but before I know it I'll find myself standing at the edge of the week, peeking over and seeing the classes back in session and the grades pouring in. However, I'm not there yet. I'm trying to enjoy the moment.

There's something relaxing about wandering in and out of stores. A delight, perhaps, in the colorful displays and whirring electronics, and the people who come out to gaze in windows and carry heavy bags. I never tire of it. Yesterday I came back with a few treasures, but perhaps the most thought-provoking one is actually a new perfume I picked up.

I'll never forgive Bath & Body Works for discontinuing my favorite scent as a girl, Daffodil Fields, but once and a while I'll feel curious about what the company is up to. I'll wander in, take a peek. Kind of like an older sister. But when I went in yesterday, I was immediately drawn to a new fragrance. The ribbon-typography yanked me in and the smell, well, it made me smile and start dreaming, right there in the store. I fumbled around for some cash and, in the end, settled on a small spray bottle and lotion of Carried Away.

The official website describes the scent thusly:

"Master perfumers have blended lush raspberries and juicy pear nectar with white jasmine and whipped vanilla to create this whimsical fragrance inspired my the way love sweeps you off your feet."

I'm not sure if anything can truly be captured in a bottle, except perhaps a genie. However, I must say that I'm greatly inspired by Carried Away.

I get carried away by many things. Crushes, manuscripts, side projects, grading, big dreams that threaten to swallow me whole with their repetition. However, it's not often that I'll look at something and think, "Oh, that's the sky in that bottle. It's the clouds, the birds, the sun and the love that I may have seen or felt as splintered pieces over the years."

Just the size of the atmosphere.

My Forest

I think that someone should write a song about midterm time. Perhaps the song would be deceptively cheerful, starting out with a xylophone solo so amazing that you'd find yourself wanting to squeeze the nearest teddy bear. But if you do know what it's like to go through midterm, especially in the spring, it would not surprise if the song suddenly switched to drums and electric guitar. In a snap. Your ear buds might even explode.

When I say midterm, I don't mean simply a midterm test - a plot devised by your teachers and professors to give you something incredibly hard to go right before spring break. No. It's more than a series of tests. It's a space-time crunch where suddenly everything that you have been working on or are involved in freezes. You, though, are still chugging forward. There will be a collision, and it's not going to be pretty. The only way to prevent this train wreck is to sacrifice your sleep to the academic gods.

Which I just can't do. I'll take the train wreck.

There's still grading to be done for my students. Some recording. Midterm grades, as you know. I'll be reading a somewhat embarrassing story about my life at the nonfiction reading next week. And, hopefully, I'll be joining hands with a friend to launch a new project into the endless abyss of the internet.

Wow. Midterm indeed.

I have two writing-related projects going right now (not my Figment novels). One of which you'll find out about within the next two blog posts or so, and the other, hopefully a few months down the road. We'll see how it goes. But both projects, in their own ways, have to do with forests.

What do you think of when you hear the word forest? What's a forest to you?

I don't have any real life experience with forests. I've never gone camping. I can't imagine camping because I've never gone camping. I admire people who do. Sometimes when I'm driving to school, I wonder what it would be like to pull the car over and wander into the scrubby brush of Florida wilderness. We don't have those beautiful woods you see in car commercials. Actually, when I'm looking on the side of the road (the one road that doesn't have shops flanking both sides), the ground is usually covered in water. I'd have to wear some serious rain boots if I wanted to trudge in there.

My idea of a forest is totally built on fantasy. It's the image I prefer, the one I've gotten from my steady IV of fairy tales and pretty photos. It's the forest of Arden, straight from Shakespeare's As You Like It. It's the original Arden from Thomas Lodge's Rosalynde. I think I've spent many an hour reading and re-reading Lodge's 16th century book, marveling at the chivalrous heroes and surprisingly strong heroines as they all explored the forest and discovered themselves. A pastoral romance at its best, I daresay.

I've recently discovered another way to enjoy this more idealistic view of the woods; it's called mori girls. Mori means forest in Japanese. It is a fashion and lifestyle created in Japan where girls (mostly) dress as if they live in a forest. They usually wear long, shapeless dresses and many layers, preferring natural materials and colors. Mori girls wear little, if any, makeup (the most defining coloring their cheeks to imitate the dolls they owned as children). In spirit, these girls seek out the small enjoyments in life, living at a slower pace, and they make choices for themselves instead of for others. Well, there's a lot more to it then that. But we're looking at the tip of the iceberg.

(Last two pictures are from the Japanese brand called Wonder Rocket)

I truly wish that I could step out of the house like this. These pictures make me sigh. Truth be told, I've always been a t-shirt and jeans girl. I tend to admire other people for fashion, and, in recent years, have made an extra effort to collect some clothing that makes me feel, well, bigger and brighter. Reflective of the me on the inside. I have a few dresses that, when it does get warmer, I'm looking forward to wearing. I guess I just have to deal with my students staring at me, confused, haha. If I do ever make it to Japan, I'm saving my money. I want to come home with some of these mori-style clothes. I haven't seen anything in the grand USA that even comes close. I'm patient, haha.

There is something incredibly endearing and fascinating about this fashion movement. Hopefully in the futute I'll be able to blog about it more. In the meantime, I'd like to leave you with one more thing pertaining to mori girls. I good friend of mine (and brilliant colleague, haha) has just launched her own blog: Hello Enaam. If you have the time, please check out her first post about mori girls and, of course, larger issues concerning self-expression and freedom:

The video Enaam talks about sent my hackles rising (if I had hackles). Really. It's more than a little unsettling - a makeover show gone wrong. Poor Stacy and Clinton. I think even they would be shocked by this. What do you think?

Good luck with your midterms, dear readers!

Lord Byron is Haunting My Book Cover!

For the past two weeks, I've been reading Jane Austen's Emma in my Romantic Comedies class. This is the last of Austen's books I've had to read, and I was enjoying how well it was written and all the little bits with Mr. Knightly. However, I started to notice something odd about the actual edition we were reading from for the class.

We were reading from an Oxford World's Classic edition. My professor obviously chose it for the excellent notes and background information (including a comparison to Much Ado About Nothing, our first reading of the semester). The woman on the cover is not someone I could picture Emma actually looking like. Her chin is too round and strong, her cheeks too flushed, her look too manly. Not that Emma is a dainty creature. But this woman is not exactly right. While I happen to admit I am a picky cover art person, this one was bothering me more than I imagined it would. Picture us all in a board room type classroom, with one long shiny, wooden table for almost twenty of us to squeeze into, bumping each other constantly with huge leather spinning chairs. Now picture all of our books laid out on the table, all those Oxford World's Classic Emma's displayed at every angle - even reflected by the table.

There was another face I was seeing while staring at the multiple covers across from me. Upside down. And I gasped when I first saw that familiar face. I wanted to jump out of my chair, knocking the two people next to me, shouting, "Guys, did you notice this? Her face, when it's upside down, looks just like Lord Byron!" It was so obvious to me that I wanted to scream. To try and demonstrate the likeness to you, dear readers, I took a picture of the books side by side - Emma upside down and Lord Byron rightside up. If you can't see the similarities for whatever reason, imagine Emma at a distance (like, across a table). That might work better.

Lord Byron. One of the great Romantic poets. You might be familiar with him. Some of you might wish to have known him... perhaps in more ways than a simple hello (I mean, yeah, of course). If you don't know who he is, I suggest you search him when you have free time. I'm a huge Romanticism buff, which is why I say that, but it's an understatement to say that the Romantics have influenced us all. There. My tiny speech, haha.

And I found this bit from one of his long poems, Don Juan, that seems to me to echo the prank he was playing by showing his face to a tired grad student:

"Thus would he while his lonely hours away

Dissatisfied, nor knowing what he wanted;

Nor glowing reverie, nor poet's lay,

Could yield his spirit that for which it panted.

A bosom whereon he his head might lay,

And here the heart beat with the love it granted,

With - several other things, which I forget,

Or which, at least, I need not mention yet."

So I'm trying to imply, by his own words, that perhaps he was terribly bored and lonely. He could have left me alone to taking my notes on Emma in peace. But he reared his ugly (maybe) head just to get a reaction out of me. Maybe he hoped it was love, but I assure you it wasn't. I spent such an intense semester in my senior year of college studying the Romantics. When I see a picture or stumble upon a poem, I smile because it's like seeing an old friend. And, romantic wise, I'd probably sooner go on a date with Shelley or Keats (or even my favorite unknown Romantic poet, Thomas Lovell Beddoes) before ever putting my hand in Lord Byron's. He's just trouble.

Unrequited Love and Russian Mermaids

Valentine's Day is finally over. I can come out now. I had my hands over my eyes, at least mentally, that entire day. But no one can really hide from it, whether they have the prescribed reason to celebrate or not. Finding little boxes of chocolate on my desk from sweet office mates brought a smile to my face. I discovered a heart drawn my attendance sheet and got a "Happy Valentine's Day" from a tardy, but well-meaning kid. I had three books lined up to read, papers to grade, and little writing assignments to finish. But, as it usually happens, the tricky feelings on this day can sneak into your heart even at its' busiest stages. I was not immune. I leaned back in my chair and stared up at the uninspiring ceiling when the feelings first surfaced. "Bah humbug," I muttered, but I couldn't say it with real conviction. I do love this Hallmark holiday. But it never fails to make me feel bad.

This year's V-Day special was a delightful, double-helping of unrequited love. The dish was made of china with delicate pink flowers as a border and the frustrated confusion that sat steaming on the pretty plate had a particularly strong oder. I'm no stranger to it, but the red balloons and stuffed chocolates seem to demand I face it head on with grim satisfaction. Well, so be it. I'm certainly no stranger to it.

It's always a comfort to think of something similar in such a situation - remembering that you're not the only one in the world going through such a trial is hugely effective. So when I tried to push the plate away yesterday, pinching my nose closed and squirming, I thought of Anderson's The Little Mermaid. More specifically, I thought of the Russian film version of it, Rusalochka (1977) by the Gorky Film Studio. It's sitting on my shelf even as I type this, just waiting to be watched again - but a huge portion of the film is on Youtube in clips. That's how I found it in the first place. If any version of The Little Mermaid has ever played up the unrequited love theme, it is certainly this one. And how our mermaid suffers.

What I like most about Russian retellings of fairy tales (and what makes it so easy to sit through strange acting and stranger dubs) is that you can tell how much love and care the crew put into the videos. The costumes are stunningly beautiful (as the actors/actresses can be) and each scene is crammed with little charming details and wonder. Rusalochka is no different.

The plot is essentially the same as Anderson's tale, but with a few surprising and creative changes. A list format for this would be best:

1. The little mermaid receives help from a traveling actor named Sulpitius.

2. The witch is a human who runs the local tavern and bargains for the mermaid's green hair.

3. The human princess (the one who finds the prince on shore) is a horrible, selfish creature.

4. The little mermaid can speak (and when she does, a little bell chimes - indicating the power and beauty of her voice).

5. The Prince participates in a duel to win the selfish princess' affection and actually DIES. The little mermaid and company band together and bring him back to life, at the cost of him never being able to know her.

6. Sulpitius sacrifices his life for the little mermaid so that she won't die after losing the Prince. She will take up a new occupation though, haunting the prince for the rest of his life. Woah.

Crazy, eh? If you don't believe me, you should definitely check it out. Youtube, as I said, offers most of the movie, but you wouldn't know you were missing a chunk unless, well, you read my list. The whole part where the Prince dies in the duel is sadly missing. Well, that's why I have the DVD. Strangely enough, the dubbing runs through the entire movie EXCEPT FOR THE MUSICAL NUMBERS. Whut. The music is pretty awesome because it is just plain silly. Silly and catchy. I feel like I'm missing out by having it suddenly switch back. I guess the dubbers didn't want to tackle the epicness.

Another thing: Prince Antoine is a very handsome young man, but extremely one-dimensional. When my friends and I watched it, we grinned with mirth and called him Stone Face, haha. He can't really get his face to morph into any particular emotion. But I applaud him for trying. Most of the Russian princely character have this problem (yes, I've watched a lot of these, haha).

Everyone knows that unrequited love is the key ingredient for any mermaid story (or any mildly interesting life). I'll finish this bittersweet post with the ending of Rusalochka; Sulpitius disguises himself in a silly mask to challenge the Prince to a duel, thus giving him the opportunity to die and save the little mermaid. You may notice that the sword fight it a little corny. That's okay. Obviously, the Prince isn't a vicious (or skillful) fighter:

Sulpitius: You've been looking for your dream. And you have overlooked it. It is the Little Mermaid!

If only we all had a Sulpitius to jump into action and speak the truth. And if not truth, perhaps announce a strong conviction of feeling that would have otherwise went unnoticed due to unfortunate circumstances. The story of The Little Mermaid continues to exist to sprinkle mermaid's salty tears upon our own wounds, upon the soft bruises of our hearts. Perhaps the sting will be the first sign of healing.