Insomniac
Memories of My College Years…
Four hours is a good nights rest, she tried to tell him. They told her she was an insomniac… or maybe she told her that. But she knew she wasn’t really. She could sleep; she just wasn’t good at it. Sleeping was some kind of secret art that people withheld teaching her. Any good sleep she got happened in the late afternoon or early evening hours. Not in the night, when her beloved moon she never saw was awake, not then. Sleep could not or would not come to her then, at least not until 3:00 or 4:00, well 4:00, sometimes 5:00 in the morning.
She liked his tie. It was checkered… shiny… mesmerizing – “What?” she was in class. Oh yeah, class. But she knew that, she had been there all along, and before that in the library, and before that in her room, and before that lunch where she had told them, “Four hours is a good nights rest.” More than she’d had all week. Three hours at a time was usually an accomplishment and that usually only happened after she worked out. She’d work out, and then pass out. If she didn’t run three miles a day, she’d never sleep.
… I don’t miss it.
I’m That Girl
I am the kind of girl who drinks brandy out of martini glasses when her husband isn’t home. I buy betta fish when I’m sad, which I pet periodically as though they were cats, they arch their backs and like it, too. People label me a clean freak, but most the time I don’t see how because my house is never clean enough. I eat my grapefruit pulp by pulp, literally, never with a spoon and never with sugar. I compulsively buy shampoo and conditioner, and am obsessive about using the same amount simultaneously – I hate running out of one before the other, and my head can never be filled with multiple smells. But am more compulsive about buying and using what I call “smell goodness” for my house (plug-ins, oil burners and oil, candles, incense, room sprays, etc.). I swear I can smell cashmere sweaters on rich women, which no one believed me until Emily on the patio of Hoffbrau Steaks. I like my dog more than most human beings, will carry him in my arms like a baby, but wont touch a human baby unless I have to. And I cannot live without a to do list. I’m that kind of girl.
I’m the kind of girl who people laugh at a lot, not because I’ve made a joke, or because they are making fun of me, but because somehow things I say are funny to them. My favorite explanation so far has been by a co-worker, Jana, “I find your neurosis humorous.” She’s talking about the fact that I judge my books by the cover, and they cannot feature children’s faces on the front, but feet are ok. I’ll buy any book that has cool shoes on the front (but they can’t be leopard print, modern high heels, or pink). I awkwardly told a supervisor of mine that he’s probably ‘pleasant’ when he hits on people. The same night another kid I worked with called me a ‘job-lover’ and I couldn’t decide whether it was an insult or not. Pecans creep me out. I like to watch people floss their teeth, especially if they’re doing it at work. I hate to cook, but I love to eat and I love to feed people, therefore I cook a lot. I invite people to my house that will never come over, for the sake of inviting them and hoping they’ll show up. I’m that girl.
The funny thing is, although I’ve changed and look very different to the public eye, I’ve been pretty much the same my whole life. I always was a bit of a geek; I will always be a bit of a geek. But the reason I am who I am are different than the reasons I was what I was. Now, I’m a geek because I want to be one, I cherish it, the books the reading, the learning, the art of it all. I’m that girl.
I’m the girl who was raised by a bloodline obsessed father.
Daddy was really into genealogy. He still is. It’s truly his passion. It completely makes sense, he loves history and he loves himself – so researching his own history is the perfect past time for him. As much as we tease him about it, it made for some really memorable family vacations. We got to meet a lot of people, we visited lots of museums and libraries, we hung out with really old people with fascinating life stories and pictures in shoe boxes to back them up, and the best part – cemeteries.
To this day, I love cemeteries.
We would hike through the woods and find the old family plots that had stones from the early 1800’s rolling down the hill. We would piece tombstones together and make rubbings of them and take the rubbings home as evidence of the find. Some of my fondest memories of my parents involve my mom and I trekking through a cemetery to find the most interesting life story, or the plot with the best tree nearby. Southern heat is a good reason to find shade and sit down when outdoors, and a lot of my shade and sitting was done next to a grave site. I usually hung out with the dead and read a good book. I liked intense and gory mystery thrillers and historical fiction that involved girls in big dresses. Essentially, I liked a good book of any genre (still do), and I liked reading under a tree (still do), and I loved being in cemeteries when I did it (still do?).
The best cemetery trip ever, my Grandma happened to be there. It got to be lunch time and she pulled a beach towel out of my mom’s van, spread it on the grass and started making a picnic lunch. It was a hot summer in Alabama and I went to sit in the grass and use the towel as a table. “Get off that grass, you’re gonna get red-bug.” Texans call them chiggers. I scooted over to the towel and my grandma fed me lunch in the grass of a cemetery.
“Grandma, we’re on graves.”
“Their dead, they don’t care.”
It was ironic and struck me so even at the time. My grandmother was one of the most superstitious southerners I had ever met, and here she was not caring about something that even un-superstitious people would care about. I ate my egg salad sandwich in peace and enjoyed the hot sun.
What’s strange about our memories is that I remember my sister being there with us. I remember Daddy hunting down the right gravesite and mom in tow with her camera to take pictures of it. There was no one else in sight, although my grandfather had to have been somewhere if my grandma was there.
My sister does not remember this at all. In fact, she insists she wasn’t there.
She wasn’t. She would have already been in college at the age that I remember myself being in that moment. So why is this memory so warped from time? I remember it so clearly, if I think really hard I can actually feel the sun on my shoulders that day and the texture of the beach towel. I can even remember which beach towel it was. I can hear my grandma say the phrase “red bug” like a true southerner.
Its so much a part of me and who I am, this memory. Its a moment of bliss. Its a moment that I’ve held onto for a long time. Because I’m nostalgic that way, and when I think of myself, I think of myself as a girl eating an egg salad sandwich with her grandma, her parents hunting down dead relatives, enjoying the grass, the sun, the trees, and the south. I think of myself hanging out in a cemetery. I’m that girl.
Intelligent Design: More Than a Bandwagon
A Review of Michael J. Behe’s Darwin’s Black Box
I thoroughly enjoyed Behe’s well-crafted and easy-to-understand argument against Darwinian “science.” I found Biology fascinating when I was in school, and this has sparked some of that forgotten love for studying things under the microscope. I would like more Darwinist groups to actually give this book the time it deserves rather than casting it aside because they think its a soap-box for Creationists. Behe clearly states that he is NOT a Creationist at the beginning of the book – put your pride aside and see what he has to say about his research before you judge his viewpoint.
Expected Much, Achieved Little
I printed up the manuscript for a book I’ve been working on since I was thirteen. Most of the plotline was developed in my teen years, most of the “working on since” has been rearranging the story to make the plot a little more linear. I meant to edit, do some moderate revisions, and send it off to a publisher.
The writing itself is good. I read enough literature to give myself that credit. But the story is so young… all the things I hate about the fad fiction that is out right now. I read Dickens and Forester and write something short of Libba Bray. The sad part is, I think its marketable, I think I could make money from it – but I don’t want my name on it, I don’t want my big sister to read it. They are the immature thoughts of a thirteen or fourteen year old, and still I can’t get the characters out of my head. They’ve been with me for so long. They were my friends when times were tough, my confidants when I was sad, and the people I rejoiced with when I was happy. Reading the story is like reading a diary in code because only I know what event or what comment inspired what sentence and which character.
I think teen girls would find something familiar and comforting in this fantastical tale. I think I would be frustrated that I never meant to be that kind of writer, ever wondering why I hadn’t been able to write like Audrey Niffenegger or Ayn Rand. I’m nearly 26 years old and I had very high expectations for myself and my writing. I may be checking things off my bucket list religiously, but I have actually achieved little.
“Remember how you had to blow on the old nintendo games to get them to work?”
“Remember how you had to blow on the old nintendo games to get them to work?”
That’s what everyone keeps saying. I keep hearing references to blowing on the cartridges by comedians and friends… all we kids of the 80’s and early 90’s. Do you know what I say?
No, No, I don’t.
I remember the Intellivision. Remember that people? Remember Frogger? Remember sliding the controller out of the side of the console (and that was an upgraded feature!). Remember Frogger and Donkey Kong and all those arcade games that were suddenly available right on your television… with the Intelligent Television – the Intelivision.
That’s what I grew up on. No Nintendo. No Sega. No Play Station. We had an Intellivision!
The Lovely Bones
I read this book a few years ago, actually, but with it being so wildly popular again I realized I never wrote a review.
The Lovely Bones is a bit tragic, terrible in its opening rape and murder, hazy with a metaphysical view of heaven, and sad as the family surviving the deceased fourteen year old attempt to function with one less person in the household. Its beautifully written despite its harsh plot points and terrifying point of view, but reading Alice Sebold’s memoir Lucky will help you understand her approach to the story. I highly recommend for 14-18 year old girls to read as a warning to pay attention to what’s going on around you and that the wise choices in life are not always polite nor do they quench certain curiosities.
Buy The Lovely Bones
The Mean Reds
A blast from the past – this is an excerpt from a zine I used to write called The Toilet Bowl Diaries (issue #7):
Blower’s Daughter is my favorite song this season… along with Deftones’ Change… (both of which are featured on my Too Cold Outside 2005 mix) they suit the mean reds of winter, which I get quite a lot. Anyone who has melancholy tendencies, is a writer, artist, raw and genuine, or blatantly a theatrical fake suffers from the mean reds at times. Which is why Holly Golightly in Breakfast At Tiffany’s is such a well-loved character. Capote wrote himself a pure classic to stand the sands of time along with Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath and Harrison’s Legends of the Fall. It speaks to everyone, because in everyone there is a Holly Golightly and a Paul Varjak, the dichotomy of being human.
What do I do when I have the mean reds? I go to Barnes and Noble with my journal and order Starbucks Caramel Chai Tea Latte with extra caramel syrup and sauce. I find myself a corner under the painted eyes of Kafka, Steinbeck and all the other greats and brood about how I’m not one of them yet; and after a few hours of scribbling away in the journal of the month, with my extra fine precise black ink pens that bleed just perfectly (not so much its hard to read, but enough to feel like you are writing in ink as it was meant to be written in), I’ll smile and feel better. My most creative thoughts and the beginnings of my most meaningful ambitions have come from a day of the mean reds.
And there is nothing better than a bottle of jack while casually strolling the house naked/in a robe still soaking wet after a bubble bath in candlelight. They are some of the most poetic moments of my life.
Origins and Thoughts, and Original Thoughts
My thoughts on Irving Stone’s The Origin so far… (I’m on Book Ten)
Irving Stone presents a very cheerful, almost carefree, narrative of Darwin’s life. Friendships are dwelt upon, discoveries are glorified, and opposition breezed over. Even the death of Charles and Emma’s third child is skipped over with a mere page and a half of detail.
Despite being an enjoyable novel, its astonishing how much humanity is lacking in the description – it has the feel of a 1950’s family sitcom, Leave It to Beaver meets the Darwin family in Victorian England.
I like Irving Stone’s version of things, however. It gives a detailed time line of publications and events. Its a good source to use as an introduction to the study of evolution: names, dates, and important essays, journals and other writings are handed to you chronologically on a silver platter so that you can jot them down and do additional research afterward.
The book is quite clever, actually, sidestepping every controversy and smiling noncommittally.
“They established a routine in which everyone fitted harmoniously,” (from book nine: the Whole Life) seems to be the theme of the book, rather than the development of the theory of evolution. It is full of lines like: “The Manuscript on Volcanic Islands moved along felicitously.” Even through his many illnesses and the death of his two daughters, Charles Darwin seems to have led a very charmed life.
I discussed all this with a member the physical JARS book club, and she pointed out something important that I failed to notice: this is exactly the way a man of the Victorian Age would want his biography written. The Victorian era was a time when the upper class mastered the art of smiling and pretending everything was fine, introducing what my friend described as “that very British attitude of ‘Get Over It and Move On.’ ”
Anakalian Whims 
Oh Dear, Another Vonnegut…
February 2, 2010 at 4:45 pm (Reviews) (book, cat's cradle, classic, religious practices, review, science fiction, social commentary, vonnegut)
A Review of Cat’s Cradle (kind of)
Buy a copy here: http://rcm.amazon.com/e/cm?lt1=_blank&bc1=000000&IS2=1&bg1=FFFFFF&fc1=000000&lc1=0000FF&t=anakawhims-20&o=1&p=8&l=as4&m=amazon&f=ifr&ref=ss_til&asins=038533348X
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