Sylvie Belle, the small dog with a mile-long tongue
My grandmother is making a small book out of something I can't post on the internet, for familial reasons, and she's using this super-fancy system. I don't know, maybe it's a book-making system. Anyway, I'm sitting on the couch behind her, facebooking and reading
Wicked and such, and she said, "Ali, what is this? It's in Latin!" So I laugh and say, "Does it start with 'Lorem ipsum?'"
"Yes! Lorem ipsum dolor..."
"That is placeholder text."
"Well why is it on my page?"
"I don't know, I can only tell you how it's used to design pages."
"Oh. ... It's on the next page, too! And... I've got three pages of this stuff!"
There will be few people who find the above funny. Nevertheless, with my failing memory and such, I feel I need to post it.
Speaking of that less-than-functional memory, I'm going to start writing things down. When? you ask. Oh, all the time, I suppose. I don't really know what I'll need to remember later or not. And some things, like vacation events, should be considered sacred in a memory -- right? Well, yes, but not in mine. I've got some sort of sacrilegious, iconoclastic, hedonistic memory. It takes pleasure in destroying -- or, more like 'greying' or 'fogging' -- the sacred moments in my life.
I'm blaming it all on deadlines. My most vivid memories are from when I was a kid, exploring the creek near my house -- Annika and I thought it was the remnant of a moat that once encircled Lindley Elementary, which we believed to be the remnant of a castle -- and finding porn and big rocks and an old, fraying rope that swung from a tree. Of course, having just read Bridge to Terabithia, we were very wary of the rope and didn't try it. One day we went back and the rope was broken.
This is a picture of my sister and I at the creek. The rope swung from this tree.
There was this one glorious rock at the beginning of the creek. It was huge, like the ones you find in the mountains that have been worn down by the constant flow of water. You could sit on it, fish for tadpoles, everything. On the other side of the bank was a beautiful, huge tree. The roots had grown outward so that a particularly large one sat over the creek and the rock, like a seat. Further upward, where the roots turned into steps, was the path through which you could sneak up to the back of the Moravian church, to the place they make candles. We could also escape from the church to the tree, whose presence was a certain kind of comfort.
One day I was walking to the rock with a purpose -- a club, or something? I can't remember. But there were these three kids, a girl and two boys, who had usurped the rock and the tree and had settled the area to be the Duke Club's fort. They'd decorated it in Duke paraphernalia. This stung not only because they'd taken probably the most beautiful spot in the forest, but because they'd taken it manifest destiny style with the purpose of establishing a fort that would celebrate my arch-enemy. Nothing could be worse.
I went back to my house in tears, and began to work on my science paper. The thing frustrated me to no end, since I was perpetually scared of plagiarizing but couldn't find another way to rephrase some scientific term. I was a failed explorer and a failed student.
The point being, this was the type of event that stressed me out. A small science paper and a devastating triad of evil-doers. Now it's so much more. Everything has a deadline. Each minute is sequestered off to do this, to finish that. It seems the only things that don't are what we put off in order to do the things we must. That's why it takes a year to finish a book, a home project. Sometimes I want to sell my snakeskin boots for a ticket to Paris. Maybe the French language will fool me, for a year or two, into thinking it's not the exact same.
But there's no point in berating the way things go, I suppose. I could always chuck society, Thoreau-style, but log cabins lose their appeal after a few weeks and I'm sure hunting vegetarian has its complications. Also I'd go mad.
Of course, being a child wasn't always great, either. First there was the divorce, which rocked through my childhood for years. And math was fucking hard! And the rabbits -- I had about 20 of them and they all died for different reasons. I gave up on buying new rabbits when, for my birthday, Maggie presented me with my grey rabbit's head. Thanks baby, I really appreciate that. No no, we're not having her for dinner.
And there's good with both. I like deadlines somewhat. I like having a schedule. I like having duties and a place to come back to and a room. I like the fact that we're getting new classes next semester. A new schedule always allows me to delude myself, over break, that I'm going to enjoy getting up early, that I'm going to accomplish my work ahead of time and with great vigor. I like that my life is dictated by a schedule that I've indirectly chosen, as opposed to a schedule my parents and my government choose.
Oh lord. If anyone has gotten this far through my silly rant, I implore them to pick up a few good books... I also apologize!
