there's a reason this is in a sock drawer

I haven't written anything original since school started, and I suppose it would be really easy to say that I've been so busy with class and papers and work that I haven't had the time.  However, this would be silly, because I have had time to watch every episode of season two of Mad Men (come on, it's Don Draper) and every political spoof that SNL has come up with for the election (good money is on Fey/Pohler in 2012).  And don't worry, I've managed to set aside a few precious hours for college sports and the upscale Allston nightlife.  

No, I've been rather quiet because my thoughts have turned both radically introspective and fiercely abstract.  I have thought and rethought and dug my way through the wild maze of values that somehow snuck into my head as I bounced all over campus.  I wanted to teach because, quite simply, teaching suits my personality: I like to be the most important person in a room, I can't sit still for very long, and nothing makes me happier than talking about Keats, Kerouac, and Coleridge (also, I'll always have an excuse to have a fun summer job as a waitress).  These are all very selfish concepts, but they are all things that, in a way, can make an effective teacher.  

I'm not saying all of this to brag.  Rather, my entire perspective of what it means to be a teacher has been challenged, and my reasons for wanting to teach (enthusiasm for people, communication, and literature) have been met with disapproving stares and skeptical laughter.  No, teachers, I am told, are altruistic; they believe they can change the world by inspiring poor kids to go to college. We can save them. 

I've never done anything for charity; I have never walked into a life-long commitment thinking, man, I'm going to be miserable, but at least I'll help a poor kid go to college.  

I was a poor kid.  I went to college.  So did a fair amount of my high school class.  One just got a job at Hopkins, doing stem cell research.  A few are in grad school for engineering, or are already working in the field.  My friends from high school amaze me every day in their achievements.  But not just the ones in college.  No, I have one friend who, painfully self-conscious in high school, has established a successful modeling career that has led her all over the world in just a few years.  Several girls from my hockey team have fallen in love, married men who treat them well, and have already started families; to me, this is unthinkable--I cannot consider myself responsible enough, at my age, to be the head of a household that contains more than me and a small green plant (even poor Lars is wilty).  

I can guarantee that, successful as we are, we never had one teacher (not one that made an impact, anyway), who thought they were doing us a favor by saving us.  I'm not sure they thought any of us needed to be saved.  No, the teachers I remember best were ones who stepped up when they had to (i.e., became our coach so we didn't have to lose our team) but knew when to back off.  More importantly, the teachers that made me want to teach just loved what they were talking about.  My History teacher rattled off narratives about the Civil War like most women would talk about the day they met their husband.  My English teacher thought that pathetic fallacy was the most beautiful concept ever created by a human mind.  We cared because they cared, not about us, but what they were teaching us.  If I ever learned that a teacher was teaching because they wanted to save me from a future of giving manicures at Crystal Nails, I'd lose respect for them, and feel a little bit worse about myself: "You gave up your future, because mine looked so bad that it had to be changed, and you didn't think I would do it myself?"  

I realized how important it is to get an education; I realize that without one, life is blocked up with so many obstacles.  Maybe there are a lot of teachers out there, teaching altruistically, that will make a difference and change someone's life.  I wouldn't tell them not to--I wouldn't want to shoot down anyone else's motivation.  I just can't do it.  I can't believe that I can make the world better, just by showing somone how to read Moby Dick without hating whales for the rest of his life.  But I don't have to believe that to keep my head up and be a good teacher; I kind of think I'll just be happy talking about books.

worth the $.99 on itunes: "speed of sound" by chris bell.  like everything else from the 70's, it's heartbreaking, yet still kind of makes you want to make out with someone.

from last fall

It’s funny how hard October tries to cling to summer.  September twenty-first—this is the last day of the season, officially.  Meanwhile, most of us ended our summers a month earlier.  While “carefree” or “relaxing” didn’t apply to most of our vacations, we still each, a little, wished the summer could last a bit longer.  Summer was different—summer had possibilities not-summer didn’t.  Summer jobs meant new people, new experiences, new responsibility; not-summer mean the same thing we, now seniors, had grown accustomed to over the last three years.  The same faces were always there—maybe with a few new ones here and there—maybe a few holding new significances—but still, similar, familiar faces you weren’t sure why you knew, but you knew just the same.  The same settings—backdrops for scenes that would change as circumstances and faces changed, but still had a hint of that old history.  September’s duty was to bring us back to this old stage, set with these backdrops, so that we could rearrange all of the characters, all of the faces, for this year’s installment of short stories.  Like the great writers we spend our legitimate hours reading and analyzing, our stories take on familiar patterns, as our personalities, ever-evolving but still growing out of the same root, lead us to make the decisions towards which our personalities would always guide us.  Each of our stories, though influenced by these new encounters we steal from the summer months, all have a faint hint of that sameness we claim we’re trying to evade.  We make mistakes we’ve made before; we’ve learned what we should and shouldn’t do and still too often gravitate towards that old behavior that makes us feel like us…

On the twenty-first of this particular September it was obvious that the day was aware of what its own date implicated; for the first time in several years, the sun, on the twenty-first, shone as thought it were trying to prove that the summer still endured, at least until midnight.  After that, people would be forced to call it “fall”, or “autumn”, if they were feeling particularly poetic.  Fall does have a negative ring to it—"fall" feels like the end of something.  Autumn seems to promise something new-ish, rather than just the time we use to mourn summer and pine for winter—autumn becomes its own season—one that highlights those in-between feelings that dominate these sheltered years in which we find ourselves caught at this particular moment in our lives.  Autumn is a part of nature, which makes our own fluctuating season feel more acceptable and endurable.  But don’t tell that to October.  Sitting outside on a mid-fall afternoon, you can feel October’s jealousy—a month that only gets to feel special on its very last day. 

This year October has decided to cry for attention by trying to behave a bit more like August.  The trees have stubbornly refused to change from their vibrant green and as a result, the water being tossed up on the rocks by a milder-than-usual mid-Atlantic breeze still shines with the brilliance of the woods up above it.  The wind itself is too lazy to change into the harsh autumn gusts it should be aware it is supposed to become.  Instead, it carries with it memories of the summer that was supposed to end a month earlier.  We can even feel a hint of some scenes and scents of summers from the past.  We don’t remember why these summers hold such good memories—I can’t place any particular moment or event—we just believe, because it was summer, that they must have existed.  I am surprised at how easy this setting can allow my mind to rest easy for the moment.  The radio perched carefully on a river rock, doesn’t seem to distract from Capote's prose, which are unfolding out of my little hands.  Instead, the lyrics seem to catch that rogue part of my mind that would otherwise wander to the distracting topics I’ve been trying to evade during this mini-vacation—the kind of thoughts that always seem to accompany September’s intrusion and autumn’s long reality.  Annoyed, I find my choice of beverage has proven more distracting than the sum of the entire serene setting we’ve carefully and unconsciously constructed and though, on vacation from the sameness I’ve been trying, with this pseudo-October-summer, to escape, my thoughts can’t help but turn back towards those I’ve been trying hardest to forget.  This Indian summer is shattered by memories unwillingly resurfaced through  the drowsy buzz of an amber ale.  I open my mouth to meditate on the one thing I want to get out of my mind’s daily repertoire, but close it again, thinking that, as long as I keep it inside, it’s not real and can’t hurt. 

Summer, you say?  Even real summer, that pre-September summer, is just a temporary fix—life is always waiting—just ask September twenty-first. 

worth the $.99 on itunes: "in the aeroplane over the sea" by neutral milk hotel. 

i hate when people call it 'beantown'

After eight hours of driving with most of my possessions stuffed into a little blue Saturn and a giant yellow Penske truck, then one week of packing them all into a REALLY white second-floor apartment, I have finally settled into Boston.  There's still quite a bit of wiggling to do to really get cozy, but the part of the city that I and my other roommates have chosen to call home reminds me more and more of "downtown" Gettysburg everyday, if my undergrad town had had ten times as many bars and a Dunkin' Donuts on every corner (the only DD in Adams County mythically burned down the year before I started college).  I'm excited to be in Allston, where, from a short walk to Rite-Aid, it appears the underground music scene is still fairly substantial; it's nice to know the area is more than just a blurb in the Aerosmith Wikipedia article.  

I wanted to move to Boston to put myself out of my element; I think a little bit of discomfort in my life was starting to become necessary, as the suburban routine was turning me into too much of a sleepy-eyed, easy-going small town girl.  Granted, there are a lot of things one can pick up in a small town that some of these big city kids won't ever understand.  They'll never comprehend the strategy of ducking away from the neighbors as they pack up the family mini van in the summer (they WILL ask you to feed their cats...and they have a lot of cats), or truly realize the REAL value of a gym membership (forgive me for this, but it's the only place in town where people are trying to get into shape, and unlike those at the grocery store, most look decent in their spandex).  They've never eaten a chocolate snowball with marshmallow while watching pig races at the fair, and would be terrified to find that Independence Day fireworks are discharged (rifles, too), on residential streets, two weeks before and two weeks after the 4th (they would also have a poor view of the Fourth of July parade because they wouldn't know to put out blankets or lawn chairs on the parade route a week early to hold their seats).  They've never had the chance to be the Buddy Poppy Queen or the Dundalk Idol, or even to see a tiny cocker spaniel dressed in an Orioles cap and a star-spangled t-shirt ride a skateboard down Main Street.  Though I'm sure, at least in Allston, they'll encounter a hobo or two who tries to pat them on the back while running (a little encouragement never hurt anyone, right?)  Sure, the city kids might have lettered in track or football, but did they ever ride an ATV or a firetruck decorated in window chalk in the homecoming parade, the biggest event of the year?

I'm a little burnt out from moving and starting classes (surprise, surprise, I'm actually supposed to be writing a short paper right now--why do you think I'm back on Blogger?), so I'll just say now, that I'll miss my town and all that it's made me over the years, and one day I'll write a very ridiculous book that no one will believe about everything I've seen, but I couldn't be happier to be up north (this feeling will probably last until the first big snow hits).  

worth the $.99 on itunes: damien rice's "rootless tree" reveals some other feelings i could express towards the past.  additionally, it's great for making other drivers nervous, if you play it loud enough in your car.  if you don't mind profanity, this needs to be on your playlist.       

it's alright ma, it's life, and life only

When I first heard about the New American Music Union concert/festival in the infamous South Side of Pittsburgh, I thought it was interesting.  This was partly because I got the news about the festival at the same time I learned about the next pair of jeans I would probably buy--the concert, and the jeans, were created by American Eagle, of all things, and as I regularly ship a pair of khakis or a fun, cheap t-shirt to myself, AE sends me floods of mailers so I can keep up with the latest and greatest pseudo-prep styles.  Apparently, as I soon learned, pseudo-prep now includes The Bob Dylan, a legend so big that this rookie writer is at a complete loss for adjectives.    

Poofy-haired, scratchy-throated Dylan and his damned harmonica have been around everything interesting that has happened in this country in the last forty years.  It would be ineffective and unnecessary for me to explain how important his work has been and still is--go rent No Direction Home, or better yet, just listen to Blood on the Tracks.  I can't really imagine most of the music that I love the most actually existing without his wretched squawking of those beautiful lyrics breaking in and making folk music tolerable and just cool.  Granted, he has his flaws, and I can only imagine that in his old age that voice hasn't exactly gotten sweeter; I keep joking (though I think I actually mean it) that the best covers are of Dylan songs, because there are an awful lot of people in the world with better voices than the old boy, but not many can write better lyrics.  Maybe John Keats.  

As I read more about the concert, I pretty much fell on the floor.  Then tipped over.  Jack White is playing at the festival, with his new band, the Raconteurs; if it were possible for a human being to mate with a song, I might take "Old Enough" out for some tapas, sangria, and cuddling (by the way, the whole album is so good, it was hard to pick which song to use for that joke).    Also starring at the event will be the Roots, The Black Keys, Spoon, Gnarls Barkley, and likely, Primanti Brothers' sandwiches and I.C. Light.  The only downfall I could find was that my Ryan Malone t-shirt is about a month outdated (yes, I'm still bitter).  Oh yeah, and the price--I am, after all, out of work, and even if I could afford the gas money to migrate five hours north for Prep-Stock '08, how could I afford tickets to the two-day event?  I had already, painfully, turned down VirginFest, which is playing right in Pimlico, practically my own backyard, because $90 a day is a price I could only afford if I decided to walk Baltimore Street a few weeknights, and Mr. Dylan and Mr. White sound decent enough blasting from my little green iPod.  So, just for sheer amusement, I check prices online:  $25 for students!  Sure makes that $160k my family spent on tuition look a bit sweeter.   I tell my sister--"Buy your ticket now--we'll figure out how to get there/where we're staying later."  Which is the plan right now, and is actually a hell of a lot more structured than my plan to see Ripken's Hall of Fame induction ceremony ("Let's just drive and stay awake for 38 hours!").

I'm still stuck in a bit of confusion.  It seems as though this concert was designed specifically for me:  it's in one of my favorite cities to visit, with headliners that I never imagined I'd be able to see, and oh, yeah, I can actually afford it.  It's also sponsored by American Eagle, which I find weird from a ridiculous amount of angles.  AE is clothing for young people who want to be hand-fed an easy, affordable style; one can deduce this from the dozens of mailers that arrive from the company each month, explaining how to wear these shorts with those flip flops and that goofy scarf.  It has never tried (thankfully) to be hipster or folky, and has championed bands like Fall Out Boy as the epitome of the high school soundtrack--"Listen to this; it's better than writing your own angsty poetry."   I can see how Spoon, the Roots, and to some extent, Gnarls Barkley, fit in to the equation: they're perky, catchy, and simple, and are always fun dance beats for parties in Mom and Dad's backyard.  Yet somehow I just can't picture Emmett Grogan dropping his IRA cap and combat boots and popping on a few polos and carefully distressed, whiskered jeans to blend in with what has become Bob Dylan's type of crowd.  

On the flip side, there are all kinds of people in this world, and I'm all too aware that I don't look like the prototypical Dylan fan, so I am probably judging the crowd a bit early.  I hope the fine fans in Pittsburgh surprise me (they usually do), but I'm pretty excited and very interested to see how thousands of high schoolers and undergrads react to old Bob croaking out "Beyond the Horizon" as the closing act of the night.  I'm selfishly hoping that most of these kids head home early, allowing my 5'0 stature a better view of that poofy hair and that quirky smile.  More than that, though, I'm hoping for the kids of my generation to impress me and give Dylan the attention that forty years digging away in the music industry have earned him.  Oh, yeah, and I'm hoping that Jack White proposes to me, but that might be a long shot, even if I decide to rock out in my cutest AE polo.  

G'night----Ang (White...sigh.)

worth the $.99 on itunes: jason mraz's cover of "a hard rain's a-gonna fall".  like i said, dylan covers are the best, and mraz can cover just about anything.  the acoustic-y deliciousness of this one brings back all the memories i never had of the sixties. 

probably not my last fitzgerald quote

So it's been awhile and you'd think that's because I was doing something valuable with my time--you'd be wrong.  It's more that not much of the past week of my life has been worth recording or remembering.  Though, as I've spent the last week raising a baby kitten in an empty household, I've had a lot of time to think about and question my impending future, which is less than sixty days away.  

What do you do when you realize that you don't exactly want to do what you've been working towards for years?  When the finish line is in sight but all you want to do is turn and run far in the other direction?  One option is to stick it out--it could just be nerves, or just the disappointment of reaching the end.  Maybe actually accomplishing a goal will bring all of the excitement and desire back.  Maybe it really is just Amory Blaine syndrome: "it was always the becoming he dreamed of, never the being."  I'm pretty sure one of the most crazy (and therefore common) fears is the fear of achievement, because most people have this tiny feeling that what they've been hoping for won't actually make them as happy as they had planned.  Disappointment in an accomplishment: I'm sure everyone's been there, and it's that nagging memory that makes that finish line about as appealing as cut-off jorts on a townie.  

For me, I'm pretty sure it's a fear of stability.  I used to be amazed at friends that planned on graduating college without a definite plan for the future--I couldn't imagine leaving my tiny, cozy campus without an exact idea of what the next few years of my life would look like.  And true to form, I didn't; I know exactly where I'm going to grad school (it's my dream school, actually) and I know that the program I'm going for will prepare me for a career that I can have, if I want, for the rest of my spry, working years.  Yet, as I look for part-time work I'm finding out that my future didn't have to be set in stone in February; there are so many other things I could have done if that fear of doing nothing hadn't held me back.  I realize that everything I'm writing is incredibly trite and cliché and looks like it could have been scripted into an ABC Family original drama (I'm not knocking the channel--I love the new Secret Life of the American Teenager), but I swear, these ideas never occurred to me until yesterday. 

Who knows?  Maybe this is just cold feet, or boredom, or both.  I love my new apartment and new campus and new city; maybe I'll fall in love just as easily with my new career.   

See ya 'round----Ang.

worth the $.99 on itunes: "sour cherry" by the kills.  a fantastic beat that's obnoxiously fun to sing at red lights with your windows down.

urban area ahead

I remember being hesitant to start this blog for a number of reasons: one being laziness, which disappeared when I realized how quickly one can go through three seasons of The Office on DVD, and one was the memory of The Open Diary Chronicles from middle school.  One would think that the image of twelve year olds writing outside of school time would be a triumph over a preteen culture that favors, at least in my day, smoking mom's cigarettes and smuggling after-school snacks out of an unsuspecting 7/11.  Unfortunately, even nerdy twelve year olds are still twelve year olds, and what we wrote in our Open Diaries became fuel for the petty but vicious faceoffs that stopped just short of a Sharks/Jets debacle (a lot of us were singers and/or dancers; it might've actually been a pretty good show).  

I'd like to think that ten years of maturity would allow me to post a blog without fear of regret; then again, my mom constantly reminds me that I should never write down anything, anywhere, that I wouldn't want everyone I know to ever read ("Remember the 'I hate Angela' Club that read your fourth grade diary aloud on the playground?"  "Vividly." Ah, sibling rivalries...).

So the bottom line is, this blog will include a moderate amount of editing; to be fair, though, who really doesn't revise their own life in their head?  It's nearly impossible for us to understand what's going on with a hundred percent accuracy; sometimes we'd be lucky to pass with a C.   I wouldn't count this as a failure though; from what I've seen, Josh Ritter explains it best: Seems like everybody else could see the things you never did/If you could yourself you'd probably have never made it through the things you did/With your heart still beating.  I think sometimes we need a certain amount of blindness to help us see that there's still a little bit of hope, or whatever you call it, that makes the effort to keep going an effort worth making (I also think music is good for that, too).

On another note, I've decided that it's useful for a girl to have some interesting skills, and I've decided I want to spend some time this summer cultivating a few.  I once read in Cosmo that every girl should know how to make an omelette and change a tire.  I know how to make a nasty good omelette, mostly so I could feed myself for the last two years of college, so that's good.  I'm not going to have a car in Boston, so that second skill would be a waste of brain space.  I started college with fair skills in Madden 2000, which were good for making friends with guys on the hall until I learned that men are born with an innate ability to manipulate tiny digital figures on a screen with a joystick, and my poor '00 Ravens lost countless blowout matches to even the lowly Bengals and Chargers.  

After watching my friends in a marathon game of Guitar Hero, I decided that could be a thing I could be good at; however, after trying to get bonus star points during my first go at "Mississippi Queen", I hit myself hard in the chin and subsequently gave up on that dream.  I've also failed at knitting, and I don't have the patience to maintain what were once above-average artistic skills.  So I guess part of this summer will be to discover the skill I want, then master it.  After all, most people can read and write, and that's pretty much all I've got at this point--not exactly a crowd-pleaser at parties.  This is another reason guys have it so much easier: the latest issue of Men's Health implores that every man should learn how to build a sand castle.  Didn't we all learn that around the age of eight?  Maybe MH should be more concerned with teaching the fellas how to put a beach umbrella in the sand so it doesn't attack unsuspecting sunbathers when the wind picks up.

See you later----Ang.

worth the $.99 on itunes: "the greatest man that ever lived" by weezer...if you were ever a weezer fan, this will make your day better.  rivers throws out some gangster rap then breaks into a falsetto that makes you question what he's been doing for the last three years.

notice i never once made a bad joke about ramen noodles

I'm not entirely sure that the best time to start a blog is one month after graduation, two months before myself and everything that sort of matters to me is shipped to another state, and five hours before I wake up and drive to the beach.  But then, I'm not entirely sure that my timing is ever terribly efficient or even appropriate, and I'm pretty sure that's never bothered me before. Surprisingly though, after four years of turning into neurotic, narcissistic English major at a judgmental liberal arts college, this is actually one of the first "papers" I've ever started writing before midnight (it's 11:59).  

I blame this not on the corrupting influence of the "real world" but rather, on boredom from unemployment and understimulation, a quiet and recently kitten-less household, and a desire to get off the couch to check out some of the songs I downloaded this morning (iTunes is killing my credit score).  Besides, I never really expected the real world to include my dad using up my designer shampoo and a bedroom that still proudly displays my softball trophies and my middle school panoramic photo.  In my real world, I at least thought my bookshelf could hold all of my books.

But, there will be time for such wild dreams--that time is September.  Right now a new Red Sox hat, which sits on my desk (see: flat place to put things that have no place) mocking the Ray Lewis and Natty Boh posters hanging un-permanently from sticky-tack on the walls, is the only thing keeping my head, so to speak, in the game.  I really believed, once, in an America where a cute (yeah, I said it) blonde with a college degree and several summers of restaurant experience in her little back pocket could find a waitress gig in a big city like Baltimore--I am now terrified for my future.  My ability to feed myself (preferably with sushi, and a glass or two of fairly decent white wine) is for the first time not entirely grounded in reality.  

But like I said, it's not time for the real world yet; I still have two years of grad school and generous let's-try-not-to-let-our-skinny-daughter-starve-or-have-to-eat-fast-food checks from my parents to look forward to.  Oh, and that beach trip that's coming up in four and a half hours; I need to work on my "unemployment tan" (thanks Carinne), lest my friends think I've actually gotten myself a job or hobby.

So that was fun for a first try...maybe we'll meet again----Ang.

worth the $.99 on itunes:  'just like heaven' by the watson twins.  a lazy, bluesy cover of a cure favorite.  and they're twins, which is the best kind of people to be.