pardon me, is this seat taken?

Do you ever have one of those days where your mouth acts like a shotgun and sprays an innocent person with verbal shot from the tips of their toes up to the crown of their head with more information than was really necessary?

What is it that sometimes makes it easier to confide in a relative stranger than one of your closest pals?

I suppose there’s the feeling of anonymity, the unknown of what wisdom they might impart, and the relief that they don’t know you well enough to point out just how skewed is your perspective. Then again, perhaps some people just have that odd expression on their face that’s mistaken for sympathy when in fact the seam of their tights is bugging them in their shoe.

i won’t grow up

…I don’t wanna wear a tie…in the middle of july!

For those of you who grew up on the Peter Pan movie musical starring Mary Martin as the little boy (stay with me) from Neverland, this song is the epitome of childhood rebellion and the need to stay young for as long as possible.

We are always told to, “not grow up too fast” when we’re children and to “cherish” our care free days as much as we can. Well, whether we did or not, they’re gone now, so what can be done to recapture them? Watching an entertaining, if somewhat politically incorrect and gender confused Peter Pan is one way. Another, is through books.

My name is Julia and I read young adult fiction. (hiiiii julia!).

There were countless stories that shaped my life and personality when I was growing up. Agatha Christie novels, in particular, are responsible for the flatness of my nose. How, you ask? It’s quite simple. When I was four and five and six, and still skimming slim paperback readers, I used to lie on my back and hold the books between my toes over my head. I even practiced enough to be able to turn pages without using my hands. Then, around age seven, I started reading hardback mystery novels like And Then There Were None and The Mirror Crack’d, and my toes experienced some serious hubris when I tried to balance the books on the bottom of my feet and ended up dropping them on my face and smishing my nose on more occasions than I really should have needed to learn.

But seriously– Little Women, Pride and Prejudice, A Midsummer Night’s Dream, The Secret Staircase, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest– all of these I remember closing and feeling different. As Cornelia Funke puts it, I feel as if I have left a part of myself between the pages. While perhaps not all of these come to mind as young adult fiction, they still resonate at 15 very differently than at 25.

What better way to escape the day than to retreat to stories where kissing on the mouth is a scandal, one’s parents are one’s teammates, and summer vacation is longer than ten paid days off? Lately, I have been indulging in books meant for a very young audience–rereading The Chronicles of Narnia, and discovering new worlds in Inkheart, The City of Ember, The Grey King and beyond.

There is something terribly reassuring about stories for young readers. It has to do with the different priorities and lack of major social responsibility, yes, but it also conjures images of my own childhood, (which I firmly believe in many ways is still going on). I remember swearing never to wear makeup when I grew up as a dancer at age five, high school soccer games under the lights of the stadium, lying under the dining room table on the phone with a boy at one in the morning.  Dances, gymnastics meets, rotating class schedules, box socials–okay, okay, I put the last one in to see if you were paying attention. I think I went to an ice cream social once. In short, the memories that you really only get to dust off and air out when you meet up with pals from those years past, or when a passage in a book reminds you of them. I personally find it difficult to sit and daydream randomly about when I was spotty, romantically awkward and overly confident. With stories, memories come edited– sans the mediocre stuff, and points you straight towards the delightful or the horrific (which one hopes you can laugh at, now). It’s important to exercise these memories, otherwise they may escape and be lost. Then the only stories left to tell our children would be about studying until 3am in the university library while streakers ran past, or reading more pages than calories eaten that day…not really scintillating stuff when chitchatting with babes of four and five years old.

Sometimes I think I’m a totally different person from who I was ten years ago. But then I open A Wrinkle in Time, and realize there isn’t much difference between Julia at 15 and Julia at 25. And that makes me very happy.

grin and bear it

I’ve met someone. And I knew, within mere seconds, that all I really want to do is staple things to his head. He’s surly, he’s silent, and an ungracious winner.

Yes, I’ve tried being nice. I’ve smiled and said ‘hello!’ enough times only to get a sniff of disapproval, to know it doesn’t matter if I acknowledge him at all.

Yes, I’ve tried ignoring him and hoping he’ll drop out of my class ( or off the planet), but that doesn’t work either.

Yes, I’ve tried rising above it and knowing I’m being the bigger person.

Yes, I’ve tried picturing him being smished by a ten ton weight and simultaneously attacked by a band of rabid hedgehogs. Nothing helps.

So I’ve sunk back down to the grumpy little imp I am, and am stewing again about whether or not it would really kill him to smile and say, “nice job” when I say “well done,” after a bout. I no longer have an ingrained need to be liked by everyone I meet (that need died tragically in a golfing accident when working in the commercial real estate industry), but perhaps it’s the feeling that I’m not being given a chance at all.

And what’s worse, is that he still beats me four times out of five when we fence. If I could give him a solid what for on the strip, it really wouldn’t matter as much to me, now would it?

So what is to be done when faced with someone who will only allow you into their existence on their terms? Perhaps I’ve got it the wrong way ’round. Perhaps I shouldn’t try to get along with every new person I meet; indeed, it might be that the time has come for me to be diabolically rude to everyone and leave it to them to convince themselves there’s a nice person deep down inside me that they just have to draw out of its cold, frustrating exterior. *Note: for those of you who feel like you have to do that to engage me in conversation now, we must have some major disconnect issues.

Maybe it’s just my pride that’s hurt. Categorically speaking, I’ve had excellent luck with poking quiet people into being bright shining beacons of conversation in the past (you know who you are), and perhaps it’s just my refusal of failure that’s spurning on my exasperation. It is situations like this that really makes me think if everyone stopped and thought about being a little bit nicer everyday, the world really, really, really would be a better place.

I say again, what is to be done when faced with someone who will only allow you into their existence on their terms?

Grin and bear it is about all I’ve come up with.

Nope, I don’t find it particularly satisfying either.

age before beauty

I’m having a Flora Post moment, I think. For anyone who has discovered the movie Cold Comfort Farm, they will no doubt remember her plan to ‘live life’ and then at fifty, write a novel as good as Persuasion. And yet, she can never seem to get past her opening paragraph.

I don’t plan to write a rival to Persuasion at any age (though if I could, be assured, I would do it in a heartbeat). However, I know how she feels. I have always envied the younger authors like Daisy Ashford, Christopher Paolini and Jonathan Safran Foer; and I am getting to the point where if I publish, I will no longer fall into that category.

But what does it matter? “age before beauty” is what my mother always likes to remind me. As long as I keep writing, what does it matter? And that is the real challenge, isn’t it? To keep writing. I am currently stuck knee deep in Heinlein’s Rules Two and Three, and am endeavoring to create a rope in the form of a schedule to pull myself out. If no one hears from me by midweek, please come armed with rope ladder and chocolate.

not so deep as a well

I’ve been a bit sluggish lately. My laughter is a bit late after every joke, and my usually sparkling conversation has lost its characteristic brightness and cheer. I think I’m going through Shakespeare withdrawls.

Let’s not even go into how much Shakespeare affects everyday word usage, colloquialisms and the day to day pride of the British nation. For me, it has been over a year OVER A YEAR since I saw a live Shakespearean play, and I do believe my health is suffering.

In general, the public schools inoculate their students from ninth grade onwards with at least one Shakespearean play a year up until college. From there, English majors (or those who have been found to have a WS chromosome deficiency) encounter practically one per quarter. Those of us who have suffered from a major Shakespeare dependency from infancy require a little extra every year, like the Ashland Shakespeare Festival in Oregon.

Beware the adverse affects that a Shakespeare deficiency can wreak upon you! Common symptoms are boring insults, lack of (stage) direction, and difficulty in understanding multi-layered jokes.

Please! Expose your children to Shakespeare as soon as possible! It’s for their own safety. Now, I’ve got to make do with some DVD of Twelfth NIght before I expire from lack of “doths” and “by my troths”!

fantasy term paper #3: extra credit

Never go see Sarah Ruhl’s Eurydice if your in an iffy kind of mood. Just don’t do it. No matter how well it’s done, you’ll still leave feeling like you were hit by a bus on the way to a birthday party.

Not to say it isn’t elegant or beautiful. It’s just, well, complicated– and really, you should have a few hours to mentally prepare for it. Which is exactly what I failed to do.

The original Eurydice is a nymph of greek mythology who marries Orpheus, a great musician and singer. She dies from stepping on a deadly snake on their wedding day. Orpheus goes down into the Underworld to retrieve her, and is allowed to bring her back on the condition that he cannot look back at her until they are both out of the Underworld. His fear causes him to look his shoulder at her following behind him, and Eurydice disappears forever. Really uplifting stuff.

Someone told me that the story of Eurydice, with all of its romance and tragedy, is meant to be cathartic–a release of emotion and a feeling of renewal. I neglected to tell them that Ruhl’s play invents the presence of Eurydice’s father. She and her father reconnect in the underworld and find a sort of happiness –a new depth of understanding with each other. Then, Eurydice is forced to choose between staying with her father and ending his utter isolation in the Underworld, or going back to life with her husband: a choice no woman should really ever be forced to make.

Yes, it symbolizes a girl’s transition from daughter to wife, but it also depicts them as mutually exclusive events. Why can we not remain daughters to our fathers, but become wives with our husbands? True, our fathers cannot protect us our whole lives, but they are far from left behind, alone and isolated.

In Ruhl’s play, Orpheus is not the brave and heroic (if flawed) musician who sings sorrowfully to move the heart of Hades and save his wife; he is relegated to merely one side of a decision to be made–something to be gained for something lost. In addition, in Ruhl’s retelling, it is not Orpheus’ indulgence in his fear that causes him to look back, but Eurydice calling out to him which startles him into turning around. On one hand, this can be seen as her fear that she will be left behind by the man she has chosen; on the other hand, it might signify her decision to stay behind with her father. Regardless of which, it seems to emphasize the idea that there can be only one man whether it be father or husband and the other must be left behind.

Perhaps this is my age speaking, or perhaps the age in which we live that gives me this sense of entitlement, but what is the symbolic benefit of forcing the choice? It cannot be said that she loves one above the other, because that would be cruel and impossible to judge. Therefore, it must be that she must take every opportunity to move forward toward marriage– and yet she fails. Or does she choose to stay back? One thing is certain, the choice magnifies the despair of the situation, and perhaps that is all it is meant to do.

Ruhl does give her characters a small break. In the end, Eurydice’s father dies a second death in her absence, and when Eurydice comes back and finds him, well, dead dead– unable to speak or interact, she too decides to wipe what memories remain rather than live with the pain of what has happened. Orpheus arrives not to much later, his mind addled by the death-amnesia unable to remember anything that happened.

And this, to me, was the highlight.

At least they all got to forget in the end. I wish I could have done the same. Not because it was bad, but because it was painful. For who in the theater did not make the decision between father and husband themselves in their heads regardless of the outcome of the play? Each of us watching lost something to gain the other in our heads, and it hurt. Perhaps this is the glory of the play: confronting each audience member with an impossible decision and in doing so, replicating the emotions of the characters in every mind and heart in the house.

Thus, for me, there was no catharsis in the theater. There was only a jumble of frustration, pity and sorrow, tight and tangled as the strings Eurydice’s father used to make her a house there on stage.

This isn’t to say that a few days later I didn’t grow to appreciate the finer touches of Sarah Ruhl’s play. I enjoyed the symbolism of written letters falling from the sky and collecting on the ground. Her use of musical phrasing and the play of exchanges between the characters were clever and well performed. Her twist made the retelling of the myth new, but its conclusion left me with a heavy stone to carry with me while I tried to find justice or redemption in her ending. It is true that not everything can have happy endings, and Eurydice certainly never did, but the depth of sadness and bitter frustration of choice in Ruhl’s play is more biting than the original.

Perhaps my catharsis will come now in writing this, delayed but satisfying all the same. There is elegance in sadness and injustice just as there is in love and triumph. If that fails, I can only remember that in the end, it was not a choice I had to make, and I am glad my name is not Eurydice.

the knee bone’s connected to the…

So it turns out muscle memory does exist. I knew it did, of course, I just had forgotten how incredibly amusing it can be at times. I just started fencing (yes with swords…i don’t make chain link or anything) again this evening after an eleven month hiatus and was thrown into a tournament my first day back. After glaring at my coach with treasonous thoughts in my eyes, I dove in to the bouts as best I could and was surprised by how much I remembered.

It’s always been that way, actually. When I was in high school, my gymnastics coach would make me stop concentrating by having me run, touch a wall, turn back and immediately start tumbling so I wouldn’t over-think it. And by George it worked! My tumbling passes came easily to me when I wouldn’t concentrate and just ran and twisted and assumed I’d land where I was supposed to. Sadly, walls were always out of bounds during meets, which is probably why I never received strong scores on floor. Additionally, now that I think about it, I crashed and burned almost as much as I succeeded when I used the “just don’t think about it” method. Thinking back, it was almost like playing roulette with myself as the ball in many ways.

It really is almost like an out of body experience when you decide not to think about what you’re doing, and just allow your body to react. It’s a bit spooky, but delightful at the same time.

Still, I find it fascinating what my subconscious retains. Makes me wish I had a pensieve.

So the question is, what good is muscle memory to me after I’ve promised my orthopedic surgeon faithfully that I won’t see him ever again (twice)? And let no one forget that muscle memory does have its price. For example, I’m going to crawl to my tub and take a nice long, hot, bath in the hopes that I regain use of my legs by tomorrow morning.

I suppose I’ll just continue to poke at the phenomenon like a kid with a stick and see how much my muscles remember the less I think.