home

I am at home again where grass, trees, and all things green exist. It's surprising how much I actually missed nature. You don't realize its absence when you're surrounded by car exhaust, dirty skyscrapers, and cement. Coming home is interesting...it would have been more poignant and symbolic had I been reading Marilynne Robinson's Home, but I settled for Housekeeping instead (close enough). New England is unbearably beautiful sometimes in its sparseness, with the gray sea sandwhiched between the gray-bluish sky and the dull washed sand. After sunset, everything is pitch dark and I revelled in how appropriate Housekeeping suddenly became, while sitting nervously in a clacking train.

The first few days home are tense, and especially the first night. Dad picked me up from the train station as usual, waiting outside by his car. We exchanged perhaps ten sentences in total between the car ride, my dinner, washing dishes, and a quarter of game four of the Eastern Conference finals between the Magic and the Cavs. I would like to blame our reticence on fatigue, but the truth is that we are sadly at the other end of verbosity. My world is deeply solitary and strangely fanciful, and I've been away from home for too long to be comfortable. The magazines had been piled on my dresser since January, and it suddenly hit me that I couldn't remember Spring Break at home because I had forgone the 250 mile journey. My only memory of that time is filing taxes and writing a less than stellar scholarship essay.

I putter away most of today, with the highlights being making a dental appointment for myself and mom, cancelling my DSL subscription, and taking a walk around my neighborhood in the foggy twilight. Einstein, the yellow dog across the street, doesn't recognize me and barks shrilly when I try to leave my porch. The night is extremely damp and the misty tree tops could have been taken from Housekeeping's illustrated cover. At least it's warmer outside than in my house, where I slept with two blankets last night and nearly froze to death before adding another one at dawn (fairly ridiculous for the end of May). The stroll was fairly pleasant, although Einstein barks at me even though I take a shortcut across our property on my way home. Now I am waiting again while dad picks up mom from the airport, and for the cycle to begin again.

you know your friends are dorky when...

they say things like:

I'm trying to convince a friend to let me borrow his nanobot factory to make self-replicating pollen eaters.

In layman's terms: I have hay fever and I want to kill myself.

hanging in there

I think...

finance faux pas

Me: You're going to London Empirical College?
Friend: Ha ha. London Imperial College, and don't worry, you're not the first person to say that.


Friend: I'm going back to A-P-T.
Me: Arbitrage Pricing Theory?
Her: Are you serious? My apartment. I'm going back to my apartment.
Me: Oh.

Dancesport

Last weekend, my friends and I went down to Baltimore to check out the US National Dancesport Championships. If you've never heard of this event, it's because ballroom and latin dance isn't as popular here as say...college basketball. Nonetheless, it was loads of fun for two days, with bright colors and footwork weaving in and out for hours on end.

At the Friday day session, we saw some senior dancers (people over 35 who dance for fun). I managed to snap some decent pictures because they were moving at approximately 1/100th the speed of the amateur dancers that we saw later. Still, I would be quite happy to have their modest skills.

One of the more disturbing aspects of competitive dancing is watching kids (under 13) dance the rumba. Kiddie porn, anyone? While dancing is a great type of exercise, it does involve quite a bit of back and forth seduction, which looks awkward when performed by little kids wearing scandalous costumes that I wouldn't even wear. Did I mention that these little kids self-tan and the girls apply about five layers of make-up to their faces? Still, it's fascinating to see how technically savvy these children are at dancing. Some of the girls especially move with the maturity of women more than twice their age. Dancing is a show, and it's sometimes hard to watch young people (as well as some adults) because they can't decide what bright and inappropriate expressions to plaster onto their frozen faces.

On Friday evening, Yiyan and I went to watch the amateur Latin dance championships. The guys and gals were smoking hot. I would take up dance just to have a set of legs like those that were flying in abundance that night. The dancers were all extremely talented, with an acute sense of rhythm running through their bodies (I guess that's the point of dancing). Latin dance is a lot of fun to watch and reminds me a lot of hot sex while standing up or two Porsches going at it. My personal favorite is the paso doble, where the males vigorously pound their heels onto the floor (the ladies do too), puff out their chests, alternate between snarling and frowning, and do everything short of beating their chests. It looks painful, but well worth the effort. The men have to be incredibly arrogant to dance well, especially in testosterone-driven Latin dances.

My second favorite is the samba, which is a fun dance that's both light and heavy at the same time. One of the two hundred youtube clips that I regularly visit informs me that the story originates in Brazil, where two strangers meet at carnival and get it on. The cha cha cha is fun as well, though very difficult and danced primarily on straight legs (youtube again). And no one can resist the fun-loving kicks and tricks of the jive (which isn't a latin dance?). My least favorite dance is the rumba, which is the slowest and fits uneasily with the other dances. It's especially disturbing when brother-sister couples do a very intimate while excellent rumba (I guess it would have been better if I left the family tree out). Latin just has that oomph and a beat that makes me want to jump up and shake my uncoordinated limbs and nonexistent hips.

The ballroom dances are more boring to watch, despite their higher difficulty level relative to latin. Posture and subtlety are much more important in ballroom, and the mistakes are amplified. Also, the big ruffled dresses in lurid colors reminded me of tea parties and the teacup ride at theme parks, especially when five couples twirl in sync. Other evocative images: sherbet, Disney, and Tropicana. My problem is that I think two of the dances, waltz and foxtrot, are deathly boring. The Viennese waltz is at least cute as the ultimate teacup dance, and the whiplash tango and quickstep are both fun to watch. Colliding couples provide some tension to the otherwise cultured menu of European based dances. After watching this for five hours straight, my eyes felt incredibly saturated...and I went home dreaming of becoming a hot latin dancer (no self-tanning required!).

being single

This must be a hallmark of being a single girl...suddenly getting a craving for ice cream on Friday evening after dinner with friends. Or maybe I just want to reminisce about undergrad, where my friends and I would eat pints of dulce de leche and only dulce de leche for dinner, and me pulling an all-niter, scarfing down a pint of Ben&Jerry's (I think it was chocolate fudge brownie), then going blithely to play some tennis.

Alas, my metabolism has slowed down. I could only manage two scoops of dulce de leche, and didn't even open the Cherry Garcia. It might have something to do with eating burgers and fries every day for lunch and dinner during my entire sophomore year of college with tuna subs here and there to break up the monotony...let's not forget about eating breakfast, lunch, and dinner at ABP during my junior and senior years. If only actions didn't have consequences, my stomach and I would be much happier now. Humans are destined to make the same mistakes over and over again, so I still eat my fair share of food truck grub, although I do try once in a while to make things like mashed potatoes with kale, terrible tasting guacamole, and microwaved hot dogs on occaision. I try. Not very hard, but I do try. As my friends know, I also eat out more than enough in Philadelphia. My goal is to eventually eat at every restaurant in Philly worth going to (this is one goal that I consistently take great strides in). When all else fails, there's the comfort of calories.

Finally, this is super cute: Ben&Jerry's Ice Cream Graveyard...all of the sad and dead de-pinted flavors.

baring one shoulder

I love one shoulder dresses...even though they don't work terribly well for people who possess large shoulders. Our eyes are first drawn to the fabric covering one shoulder, then to the bare shoulder, which is magnified 10x. Essentially, these designs are perfect for people with no shoulders, which no swimmer could ever aspire to. One can always dream.

young and entitled

The Emperor's Children by Claude Messud is one of those creations that 'literary' people love. I thought it was quite good, though depressing as all hell and tough to read. A book that weaves in and out of six lives, the majority of whom are young and entitled with plans to take over New York, it just hit a bit too close to home. Messud is an unflinching author with no qualms about creating characters with a variety of less than admirable qualities who enjoy using dialogue sharp enough to leave bloody messes wherever they step.

The stories are compelling even if the characters are primarily unsympathetic. My absolute least favorite is Marina Thwaite, the ravishing authoress-wannabe offspring of the successful journalist Murray Thwaite. Her best friend is Danielle Minkoff, by far the 'nicest' and most sensible character in the book with unusual but moderately attractive looks (you know she'll go FAR in life). Rounding out the cast is Julian Clarke, a gay and loserish Eurasian bum who cooks gourmet meals, Ludovic Seely, a libertarian Australian with dark, slightly gayish looks and plans to take over the world through a literary coup, and other colorful and distasteful characters.

For all of its pizazz, The Emperor's Children doesn't skimp on the substance, although I did wonder what the main message was supposed to be. Don't get your hopes up? Don't feel entitled? Don't be beautiful? Messud cleverly weaves all of the stories together but ends rather surprisingly, yet fittingly. Since it is an ensemble cast, the flow of the story is a bit uneven at times, though good on the whole.

The biggest surprise of The Emperor's Children is that I had to read it in front of my computer in order to expand my vocabulary. Who knew that Mayakovsky was a part of the Russian Futurism movement? And I certainly didn't know what pergola, probascis, and osculate meant before picking up this tome. Anyone other than Messud or a historian who uses the word paterfamilias would come off as conceited, but she manages gracefully, as well as inserting otherwise pretentious vocabulary including naif and uxorious. Messud is a chameleon and master when it comes to language, interspersing highbrow vocabulary with gorgeous phrases such as 'syrupy Thursday afternoons' and everyday ones including 'everything about him looked faggy'.

I apologize for getting carried away by Messud's amazing manipulation of language. Other than that, I do wish that she had softened some of the dialogue and tightened the overall structure a tiny bit. The Emperor's Children is a pretty good read, though Revolutionary Road is still vastly superior despite its mundane vocabulary and inferior wit.

my revolution

This was my first visit to an official book club, and it was pretty fun:) It had all the requisites: women, wine, and home-baked chocolate chip and oatmeal-raisin cookies (I felt so pedestrian with my measly contribution of potato chips and pretzels, although I redeemed myself a bit with my terra vegetable chips), and South Philly. OK, maybe not South Philly, a neighborhood that makes West Philly look like Greenwich, CT in comparison. The women were really sweet and a few of them were my age! And not everyone was married! Even better, we actually discussed the book for about an hour before moving onto a more general discussion about conformity, privacy, and facebook.

Our book was Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates, a well written and brilliantly executed story about people being stifled by white picket fences and kids in the 1950s. It was also one of the most depressing books that I've ever read. It started out mildly depressing and ended up crumpled in an all-consuming malignant tumor of misery. Also, I spent the day before reading The Emperor's Children, which I can also confidently place in the extremely depressing category.

Revolutionary Road tells the story of a young couple fighting for their grand delusions while saddled with two kids, two unimaginative neighbors, and two hearty scoops of immaturity. Evidently a happy ending wasn't going to materialize, but the weight and absolute soul-crushing account of Frank and April Wheeler was quite unexpected. Who knew suburbia could be that bad?

As the novel starts, April Wheeler, a pretty blond housewife with big plans, is the star of a local play that the neighborhood guild is putting on. We're immediately introduced to the peculiar dynamics of two slightly off-putting people after the play wraps, and the marriage (as well as everything else) doesn't really improve after that. April is stuck doing dishes and scrubbing the oven every day and Frank has a deathly boring job involving typewriter manuals. As a side note, one of the women at the book club (fairly pretty and in her mid twenties) has almost exactly same job (I did anxiously inquire after her mental well-being). It's amazing how much drama Frank endures besides his hypothetical paper cuts.

The book is mostly told from Frank's point of view and is faintly reminiscent of Mad Men on severe depressants. Yates does a beautiful job constructing the dialogue and arranging each scene in a lovely and ultimately well-wrapped arc. The form is good and the function even better. Although all of the characters were heavily (or moderately heavily) flawed, they were all gripping in different ways and one was almost sympathetic. My only complaint is the faint whiff of didactism and the occasional plot device that floats around in the story. Although Revolutionary Road is an indictment on conformity and repression, it also speaks powerfully about family and individual accomplishment. The language is moderately simple but deceptively rich underneath. After 50 years, the book is as relevant today as when it was first published and a joy to read.

feeling fragile

Give all of us gathered here tonight the strength to remember that life is so very fragile. We're all vulnerable, and at some point in our lives we will fall. We will all fall. We must carry this in our hearts, that what we have is special. That it can be taken from us. And when it is taken from us, we will be tested. We will be tested to our very souls. It is these times, it is this pain, that allows us to look inside ourselves.

- Friday Night Lights, Pilot