Stanza, Day Two

So I was walking up the stairs, right? And when I got to the top I went a little to the left, past the table with the free pamphlets, and then I looked up and you know who was standing there? SEAMUS HEANEY. And I didn't even know what to say, so I didn't say anything. It was ten seconds. Less? More? And I'm thinking SEAMUS HEANEY. Hi? No--Hello. And then what? No time for a conversation. I like your poems? And he says what? Thank you? Thank you. How many times has he said that in 20 years? Thanking everyone. Seamus Heaney thanking me? Wouldn't that be--And then someone came and led him away to somewhere where I couldn't follow. And there I was, just standing there, thinking SEAMUS HEANEY, in this little town with three streets.

Weekend Update Plus

Braemar:

The hike was both awesome and snowy. Photos here!

We also saw a giant white rabbit. Did not follow.

Tangentially, Alice in Wonderland: Did anyone else find it supremely disconcerting that Tim Burton's Alice, who, while above ground, had the gumption to question society's restrictive norms and expectations of women (I'm thinking of the corset and stockings conversation in the carriage), and yet didn't once question why she was in Wonderland and why she couldn't get out of what she believed to be her own dream? And then we spend the rest of the movie following her around while she insists that she doesn't want to fight the Jabberwocky and yet never asks how she ended up in the scroll and why it has to be her? Do the books explain it better?

But I digress.

While we were driving back from Braemar, I saw the sign for Dunsinane and got really excited. And then I went home and Googled how far it is from Birnam Wood to Dunsindane. (Forty minutes by car, six-ish hours walking). Does that make me a total lit geek?

Class:

The Historical Novel--Apparently we're starting presentations a week earlier. I really must get started on Blood Meridian.

Aspects of Modern Fiction--We did have cake in class! (and thus talked very little about James Joyce). I'm not complaining.

Other:

So, every year St Andrews hosts StAnza, and international poetry festival. I've volunteered to work a couple of the events this weekend, so we'll see how that goes given that I have no idea where the buildings are.

Did you know that a mandolin is also a kitchen appliance used for slicing? We didn't, and thus team E=mc(squared) lost Monday night bar quiz by half a point. TRAGICAL. (I suppose, having read The Intuitionist, I also should have remembered that Otis designed the safety elevator. My bad Colson/Amy Hungerford).

I missed the first Fortnight two weeks ago, but walked by the second round tonight on my way back from bar quiz. The scene: drunken first years lying on the floor of front hall surrounded by haphazardly stacked chairs and poorly draped sheets. Other drunkards struggling to play magic cards. What ever happened to good, clean, sober fun? Can we get that back?

London for spring break! You have no idea how excited I am for real (ethnic) food.

OK, I actually must read now.

xoxo

Bongi

Snowdrop Spectacular

This is mainly for Jim because he's the only one (I think?) who reads this who's not on Facebook. PEER PRESSURE. (Or, perhaps, intergenerational-pressure since you're, like, way old.)

Please don't fire me?

Anywho, here are photos from our adventure to see the annual blooming of the Snowdrops in Fife. It was totes awesome, and way better than reading James Joyce. (Speaking of which, on a scale from one to atrocious, how bad is it that I imagined Stephen Dedalus as Robert Pattinson?)

In other news:

We're hiking Braemar tomorrow which should be awesome.

They cancelled the Gloucestershire Cheese Rolling this year! Dislike.

Cafe Bistro's Milk Chocolate Coated Butter Biscuits are a poor, poor substitute for Petit Ecolier.

TELEPHONE.

Last Minute Lucy

I just thought I would share my most recent discovery, that my habit of last-minute essay writing has absolutely nothing to do with the so called "rigor" of Yale. This is evidenced by the fact that I am taking two classes that each assign one novel a week. And yet, this morning, during my tutorial for The Historical Novel (between the hours of 10.00am and 11.00am) I was writing the conclusion to my paper for Aspects of Modern Fiction (due 12.00pm).

I've had the essay question for five weeks.

Also, I wore a skirt today and didn't die. Spring, is that you?

Unlikely Best Friends

I am currently trapped under A Portrait of the Artist as Young Man, A Passage to India, and The Instance of the Finger Post, so please excuse my lack of update.

I wrote this for Daily Themes.

It was dream week.

So Copernicus and Martin Luther are on the 5, right, express from Fulton to 86^th and Lex, hoping to score themselves some cultured honeys at the pietre dure exhibit at the Met. Marty’s sprawled over two seats flipping through the brochure, yelling out non-interesting facts (Man, we gotta hit the café, they got burgers shaped like Guernica!), and Nicky’s throwing apologetic glances all over the train, his eyes saying, Sorry, I’m with ridiculous.

“Trust me,” Marty says, “It’s all jewelry boxes and vases and shit. The ladies love that kind of stuff. But you gotta stay away from the tourists this time. I am not in the mood to explain to no other doe-eyed, country girl that Broadway and West Broadway ain’t the same street. I mean, look at the sign girl! They got two different names!”

And then the train stops and they get out, and they’re walking up the granite staircase and through the glass doors and through the glass doors and up the marble stair case to the second floor where all the European stuff is and sliding past them is some tu-tu wearing young thing, and Marty’s all over it trying to intercept her.

“Girl,” he says, sidling up behind her, “You lookin’ spontaneous!”

She turns, gives him a once over, says,

“What do you think about Degas?”

He says, “I don’t know much about any type of day, I’m more of a night man if you know what I mean.”

He winks.

She frowns, adjusts the red flower in her hair, and jumps back into her painting.

“Alright, alright,” he calls to her immobile form, “I’ll catch up with you later. We’ll ren-dez-voos for lunch.”

He turns back to Nicky, says “And here I thought these art folks was supposed to have manners. You know what, I’mma leave comment card—rude ass dancers should not be admitted.”

Nicky shakes his head, says, “Well, I’m sure if you could resist nailing it the door this time, the administration might be more receptive to your requests; although I suspect that temperamental teenagers are not their most pressing concern.”

Marty crosses his arms, “Why you always got to be all huge-word-centric? Just talk man.”

“Marty,” Nicky says, putting a hand on his shoulder, “You got 95 problems and a ballerina ain’t one.”

The Jonathan Safran Foer Saga: Part II

I know, two posts in one day! But really, Liz has been asking for this for the better part of a year, and who am I but to oblige? Enjoy it Marshmallow.

II.

Jonathan Safran Foer lets me into his class and Jennie has officially dubbed me “baller.” He was very nice about it even though I think I was very annoying, following him to his car like I did and speaking much too quickly and taking too few breaths. I go to the dean’s office to rearrange my schedule because now that I’m fake-taking Intermediate Fiction Writing, I cannot really-take Women, Food, and Culture, since the class times overlap. When I go to see Mary, who is Dean Silverman’s assistant, she tells me I have three hours to pick a new class or else she’s going to fine me for not finalizing my schedule on time. I blindly pick African-American Culture in the 20^th Century from the bluebook thinking it cannot be that difficult because I am an African-American who is fairly familiar with the 20^th century, having lived through a solid decade of it—even if most of that ten years was spent developing fine motor skills and learning how to read. What I do not realize, however, as I hand in my schedule with twenty minutes to spare, is that this also conflicts with Intermediate Fiction Writing. But, I do stop by the book store and buy Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close and then call my friend Ritchell, who is a very big fan of Jonathan and Nicole, and tell him the good news. Actually, I ask him if he’d like to hear another reason Harvard (where he goes to school) blows, and then I tell him the good news. He is sufficiently jealous and I enjoy my gloating.

But it ends up being OK for the most part. African-American Culture in the 20^th Century is easy, so I skip out on half of the Wednesday lecture and walk over to the Saybrook Lyceum Room. Intermediate Fiction Writing is funny because no one asks who I am or what I’m doing in their class, and I don’t volunteer the information.

One Tuesday (like most Tuesdays) Jennie forgets to forward me the pieces. She forwards them to me because I’m not on the panlist, even though I sent Jonathan Safran Foer an email politely asking him to add me because Jennie is incredibly forgetful, and in this proverbial way, not like an elephant at all. But it’s not a big deal because I don’t have time to read them anyway on account that I have a paper to finish for African-American Culture in the 20^th Century that’s due that evening. In lecture, however, the professor gives us a twenty-four hour extension. As I leave class, I realize I could go to fiction but decide against it because I would be very late and subsequently, the actual elephant in the room. And besides, I wouldn’t know what they were talking about. Instead I go grocery shopping because I’m making dinner for my suitemates on Friday. I buy pasta and cheese, and sunscreen because I am going to Hawaii during spring break with one of my other real-classes. I am carrying the groceries, listening to the This American Life, crossing York Street when I see him: Jonathan Safran Foer. I freak out. He will know I skipped class after all that begging I did. He will know by the bags in my arms that I skipped class to go grocery shopping. He will be insulted, infuriated, disappointed in these so-called dedicated Yalies. In revenge, he will blacklist me in the English department, and then I will have to major in anthropology like I said I intended to on my application. He is walking with an older woman, I think he sees me. I lift my chin to say hello, in hopes my Midwestern friendliness will offset his impending rage.

He turns his head. Away from me.

Sweet baby Jesus, I think, I just got snubbed by Jonathan Safran Foer.

I tell this to Trinh when I get back to the suite. In short, she says, I’m fucked.

I email Jennie. She says not to worry about it. I don’t believe her; trouble is always afoot.

For the next few classes I am convinced that Jonathan Safran Foer hates me. I take his lack of eye contact for despise, neglecting to remember that he rarely makes eye contact with me 1) because I am not his student, and 2) because I am usually attempting to un-obviously stare at Alex Borinsky (it is because of him that Jennie and I have been considering the merits of polygamy, and later, the difficulty of being polygamist beards, and later, why we didn’t go to a school with more straight boys).

It is the last class of the semester and I wait to talk to Jonathan Safran Foer and give him the card I wrote with my orange sharpie, because orange seemed like a memorable color.

I thank him for taking me and this is what he says in reply:

“I’m glad you could make it to all of the classes.”

I am staggered, flabbergasted, dumbfounded, as if someone had just told me Stephen Hawking’s favorite game was Dance Dance Revolution.

I am also beginning to feel increasingly stupid. I start to explain the story, then stop when he looks disinterested. I hand him the card and tell him that I’ll be in New York for the summer, and if he ever wants to hang out with a dorky freshman, I’m likely available. (I feel stupid saying this, because it is the exact same think that is written on the card. But it’s all I can come up with in my taken-aback state).

And then he says the thing that redeems any negative feeling I ever had toward him, mostly garnered from not answering my emails:

“No one’s more dorky than me.”

He says this, and I think I might have a chance.

Will it be chocolate cake?

Sorry sorry sorry sorry! I was swamped last week with fellowship applications and thus the lack of update. But, without further ado, 10 highlights in no particular order.

1. The weather was uncooperative for our Edinburgh plans this past weekend (read: hail), so we’ve opted to go on a later date when being outside will cause us less physical pain.

2. However, we are making a trip to see the annual blooming of the Fife snowdrops this Saturday! Don't they look lovely?

3. Ford Madox Ford was born Ford Hermann Hueffer. I think I would have changed my name too.

4. Modernism: self-aggrandizement meets unresolved teen angst.

5."Will it be chocolate cake? Who will bring drinks?" Actual questions asked by my professor for Aspects of Modern Fiction after he assigned one of the discussion groups to organize an in-class birthday party for one of their members (whose birthday is this coming Friday). I'll let you know how it goes.

6. So my friend Yamila and I went out to dinner on Sunday (no hall dinner on the weekends here--how I miss Sunday Sundaes!) and we walk into this place called Pizza Express in which the following conversation takes place:

(Yamila and I walk in the door)

Waiter: Do you have a booking?

Yamila: No.

Waiter: I'm sorry but we won't be able to serve you tonight.

(Yamila and I look around, confused, at the nearly empty restaurant)

Waiter: We've run out of dough. And mozzarella.

Me: We are not in America anymore.

7. So my hall has started this event called Fortnight. Every fortnight (two weeks) we throw a fort night, in which we all get drunk and build forts in the common room. They even got beer donated. First one is this Friday I believe--I'll be sure to bring my camera.

8. We had Scottish Night in the dining hall last Thursday in which I a) ate Haggis--which I will never do again, b) had Robert Burns's Address to a Haggis read to me by Mr. February 3rd (OK, not really him, but you know what I mean) but in a kilt. Or in other words: SCOTTISH HIPSTER. (I'm so sorry I didn't have my camera Trinh)

9. Big ups to Trinh Nguyen for hand delivering my last fellowship application to the Stiles Master's Office, because, you know, I'm a procrastinator who doesn't read directions. And overnight post is mad expensive.

10. I think my AmeriLove has driven me to a bad place. For God knows why, I've self-selected to give my class presentation in The Historical Novel on Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Rumor has it it's so violent that Harold Bloom had some trouble getting through it. This should be interesting.

That was for you Liz Marshman.