Hello, Goodbye; I'm Rather Crazy

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain. 

-T.S. Eliot, "The Wasteland"

What happens when you wanted something that you don't want anymore?

When I was in middle school, my favorite color was pink. When I was in high school, I preferred black, I preferred blue. Some people can not remember what my favorite color is anymore. It changes with me, you see; it reflects who I am. I liked pink when I was young and ignorant. I liked blue when all days were gray days and I mummified myself with paper.

Today is a gray day. The weather is cold and windy; it sprays water at my face. I listen to Vivaldi in my room and try very hard to remember. 

What happens when something happens you aren't sure you're ready for? 

In Northern Ireland I had a room to myself. I would lie awake in bed and listen to the people overhead laughing and drinking. The floor above us was co-ed. My floor was single sex. I stayed awake and made promises to myself I was not sure I would keep.

My favorite color is yellow. I have crossed the ocean and I will cross it again. I am watching the spring rain fall, so that next month, I can watch the flowers bloom. 

 

What happens when you finally take that first step?

 

Visiting Detroit

Yesterday I went to Detroit with my friends Nicole, Felicity, and Adam. Nicole loves Detroit, and she really likes sharing it with other people, even though it’s virtually an American Glasgow. I’ve been to Detroit a few times for service learning, or, for working with fifth grade students, getting them revved up for college, and teaching adults and immigrants how to read, write, and pass the TOEFL (that darned test you need to take to prove that you speak English passably well). But yesterday was my first time actually wandering around Detroit without a chaperone, and yesterday was Adam’s first visit.

Cheers for Adam, for overcoming his fear of Detroit.

Our first stop was the DIA, because Felicity has a homework assignment for Art Appreciation that involves her writing a two-page paper on any piece of art she prefers. She and Nicole were very good about taking everything in stride, and making comments on all of the art, and I felt like I was back in the Toledo Art Museum with my sister and her art teacher, discussing the brush strokes of Manet. I let them wander around at their own pace, and looked at different Detroit-era photographs. Some were of dashing women in T-birds, looking as if they had just been killed, and some shows a Then & Now perspective of Detroit’s bygone glory days compared to what stands now. One of my favorite photographs was of a smoking woman wearing gloves and two long strings of pearls, and that gave me an idea.

We left Felicity in the main hall, drawing pictures of a suit of armor, and I started going around playing Tag the Cute Paintings, and took a picture of every cute guy I saw. 

I think this guy wins the contest.

They're twins!

  Unfortunately, I ran out of cute guys and started tagging cute girls, and then I ran out of cute girls and remembered that I had come with friends, so I turned my camera on them.

They were not good sports about it. Nicole told me I should just try playing Candid Camera, and taking pictures of them when they least expected it, but then they got mad at me because I’d get dumb pictures of them.

Sassy Adam, Thinking Felicity, and very Blurry Nicole.

 About that time, we had seen van Gogh and the Egyptian art and the Renaissance stuff and wandered through the really weird modern art exhibit, and I’d probably threatened to hit Adam about fifty times, so Nicole and Felicity decided it was time to go to dinner at the Hard Rock Café. We left, and drove into downtown Detroit and found a parking garage, then went to lunch.

Since it was Saint Patrick’s Day, everyone was in green, and all of the music being played was Flogging Molly and Dropkick Murphys, with a few other songs intermixed just to break the monotony up. I rocked out to some of my favorite tunes, and got laughed at by Adam, and then basically daydreamed about Maggie May’s for the rest of our stay, because American fries are really weird after eating Belfast chips and the hamburger wasn’t nearly as good, and I kept remembering milkshakes full of marshmallows. Everyone really liked their food but me, I think.

After dinner, Nicole decided we hadn’t seen enough of Detroit (and Adam kept asking where all of the skyscrapers were too, Chicago boy that he is) so she took us off on a very cold excursion through Detroit. Felicity kept running across the crosswalks, and so we’d all have to follow her, and we ended up at the Renaissance Center, looking at GM’s cars and wandering around. 

The RenCen

Canada!!!

 The best part was going out by the Detroit River and seeing Canada. I would have loved to stay and walk, but it was really cold and windy, and none of us had dressed for a walk, so we went back to the car, and things sort of fell apart there, because Felicity had forgotten to print out return directions to Madonna. Which is okay, because usually you can just backtrack on the first set of directions, but that didn’t work so well in Detroit, and to make a long story short we all ended up on I-275 and Felicity almost had a breakdown, she was so worried about all of us. None of us were particularly good at helping except for Nicole, who was very calm and reassuring, but us kids in the back didn’t do much to help Felicity out. But we all got home okay, if a little worse for the wear, and had hot chocolate in Nicole’s room to relax.

When Life Hands You Lemons...Make Victorian Lemonade

Life has been giving me lemons lately, and when God throws me something bitter I like to made Victorian lemonade and pass some out to all of my friends. I’ve heard that doing something nice for others tends to make you feel good about yourself too, and so when bad things happen I try and be especially nice to others. Usually this doesn’t work, because I end up having panic attacks, but this is the goal—and besides, Victorian lemonade’s no good for you anyway, as it is made of some gin and way too much sugar and a bit of lemon juice, so it is better to be nice than to get your friends drunk. But last night when I went to bed I was determined that today I would be put together, cheerful, positive, and somewhat grounded.

So it was a surprise when the first words out of my mouth this morning were, “What is wrong with you?!”

Let me set the scene. I’m safely snuggled in bed, warm and cozy. I’ve just emerged from a dream, and at that point that I could roll over and fall right back where I left off. I was dreaming that I was in Dublin to visit Hannah’s very own library. She was showing me around the ancient texts when she said, “Hold on, I have a surprise for you,” and she opened a door and revealed Tom Hiddleston, staring at a chess board. He was rather surly in my dream, and not as nice as he seems in real life, but Tom Hiddleston is Tom Hiddleston, even if he is crabby, and I was really hoping I would fall back asleep and keep dreaming about British movie stars.

I had almost returned to Dublin when Brooke’s phone started going off, loudly and insistently. This was annoying, but not unduly so; Tom Hiddleston was only a few seconds away….

Something fell. “Shoot!” Brooke said. I heard the creaking of springs, suggesting she took a dive, and then what sounded like books toppling over.

Somewhere in my muddled mind I wondered, Is Brooke all right? and What happened? What’s wrong? but I also knew, at this point, that Tom Hiddleston was gone and he was not coming back.

And so I shouted, “What is wrong with you?!”

Brooke’s first response was to be churlish back, but I’m guessing she looked over and saw that my eyes were still shut, and so her voice softened.

I fell asleep again.

Next thing I know, Brooke has left the room (what the heck, man, Brooke never gets up before I do!) and her phone is vibrating. Loudly. I got up, blind, and managed to find her phone and turn it off. I settled back into bed, hoping I could at least go back to sleep, even if it was a dreamless one. Brooke returned, and for what was probably an hour I managed to chill out in that hazy zone between sleep and wakefulness.

I woke up again about nine. Brooke was having trouble with her computer. Without scrambling for my glasses, I fumbled and found my laptop, found my way to blackboard, and handed it to Brooke. “Here,” I mumbled, “use mine. I’ll print your homework off for you.”

Now that I was up, and Brooke had gotten her paper printed, she went back to bed and I set about getting ready for my day. I had a 15 minute presentation due at 4:00 that afternoon, and I was already dreading it. I finished getting ready for work in half an hour, but couldn’t stay in the room worrying, pacing silently. I left, and wound up in the Campus Ministry office.

Patrick Waters, our new CM leader, was there, and he listened very patiently to my list of woes, and then told me the story of his heart attack, which happened when I was in Northern Ireland. I decided to try and spread the metaphorical Victorian Lemonade, and told him how worried everyone was when he was sick and how much light he’s brought to Campus Ministry. This surprised him, so I took my leave and ate a poptart in the Take 5. I still ended up a half an hour early to work, but this was fine by me.

Unfortunately, I was only at work for four hours. Then I left, choked down dinner, and lurked around upstairs, where I was kidnapped by my old Japanese teacher. I am deathly afraid of him. Ever since he made me cry last year, I’ve been on pins and needles around him—I won’t cross my legs, slouch, or even use contractions in his presence.

After that ordeal, I had to go to class and be the first person to present on the History of Pre-English. Luckily, I did not faint (which was something I was actually worried about) or throw up (which hasn’t happened before, but you never know). In fact, I think I was pretty clear. At any rate, my professor seemed really happy, and it was over. Amen.

So as a reward for getting my homework done I got to spend a (mostly) worry-free evening in the old Contamination Room of the asylum I call home. The Contamination Room, now my friend Nicole’s room, was used for students who were ill. They would stay in isolation in the room, and it’s sort of left a weird mark on the aura of the walls. Unfortunately, by eleven we were all exhausted, Elisabeth had gone paranoid, and I was dozing on Nicole's chair.

Anyway, bedtime for me--I've got to try and sort out my problems tomorrow morning. 

If I am lucky, I'll be back in Dublin with Tom Hiddleston, playing chess whilst surrounded by books. If I'm really lucky, Brooke won't wake me up tomorrow, and if I'm blessed, my troubles will resolve in the morning. 

But for now: Victorian lemonade. 

Please note again that I live on a dry campus, I am under the legal drinking age, and Victorian lemonade is an elaborate metaphor for my problems. 

Multimedia Communication

Tonight I suffered through another Mass Media class at my uni. When class was finally over and I stepped outside, the entire world was white with snow. During the last three hours of my life, the world had gone from patchy pieces of snow to being a winter wonderland.

But I have not come to describe the weather to you. Most of you live in Michigan, and if you want the details on that particular story you can either A) Look outside of the window, or B) Call my dad. He likes chatting about the weather. He was a meteorologist in a past life.

If you do not live in the U.S., google me. I don’t know.

I hurried back to my dorm, and the first things I did were as follows:

1. I realized that I left facebook up again for the whole world to see and my roommate to hack (if she was here, but luckily she wasn’t, she went home for the weekend). During this time I had ten alerts and my friend Stephanie messaged me.

2. Debated going to an event on Mary’s Mantle.

3. Debated untagging myself from the event on Mary’s Mantle.

4. Checked my e-mail.

5. Went on tumblr.

I’m going to be very open and honest with you right now. I am addicted to tumblr. Tumblr is how I get my news. It tells me, Something bad is happening in China; people are being stabbed; YOU SHOULD BE AWARE. It tells me that YouTube has this gosh-awful Barbie drama that I should watch, and so I watch all thirteen episodes, most of which contain bodily humor. Often it reminds me that Lydia Bennet just posted a new vlog and ** SPOILER ALERT** dear God, she just kissed Wickham!!! **End Spoilers**

Now, I am also going to be frank with you. My tumblr is private. Only two people on my facebook know where my tumblr is located, what my  name is, all of that jazz. However, if you were to see my tumblr profile, you would surmise that: A) I am obsessed with the U.K., B) My favorite singers are Steam Powered Giraffe and Owl City, C) I love Pride & Prejudice, and D) I am an avid feminist.

Oh, and E) I am madly in love with Thomas William Hiddleston.

On tumblr, I am able to follow people who like the same things I like—feminism, Tom Hiddleston, the U.K., Pride & Prejudice. And the people I follow introduce me to things like The Most Popular Girls in School, John Green’sbrotherhood 2.0 videos, and History Channel’s new first-ever scripted series Vikings.

When I got back from class tonight, there was a lot of messages waiting for me on tumblr. Steam Powered Giraffe is airing a livestream event tomorrow; I should watch it! Rachel Kiley, one of the scriptwriters for The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, is being mean again. Tom Hiddleston is going to be in a vampire movie (after he gets back from Africa, anyway). Benedict Cumberbatch is playing Julian Assange (and he looks terrible with white hair).

This is my news source. This is how I find things that are interesting to me.

Tumblr is how I learned the names of the men (and woman) in my favorite bands. It’s how I follow the careers of my favorite singers. It’s how I see theories on how Sherlock Season 3 is going to go, and what’s going to happen with Lydia Bennet. It reminded me that I should wear orange to support the prisoners of Guantanamo Bay. Tumblr is for people to make connections with other people, and while I do not talk to anyone on tumblr, it helps me navigate my world.

But it’s not just tumblr. It’s YouTube and it’s livestream and it’s blogs and it’s music. I find new music, which leads me to iTunes; I find gifs, which leads me to videos on YouTube; I learn via tumblr and YouTube that SPG is going to be on livestream tomorrow. That means I’m even more connected to my favorite band than I would be normally; with only a 7-second delay, I will be engaging with the band members as if I were actually in the room with them. They can see my comments onscreen, and so we are engaging in communication.

That’s all that this is. It’s communication.

And communication is something that Steam Powered Giraffe and The Lizzie Bennet Diaries do well. They are examples of interactive media, this new phenomenon that’s been taking off because of the immediateness and presentness of the internet.

Let’s take SPG for example. Originally, there were three members—Bunny “Rabbit” Bennet, David “The Spine” Bennet, and Jon “The Jon” Sprague. (There was a fourth, but we won’t concern ourselves with her here.) They have always been open with their fanbase, and so when Jon left the band, Bunny was honest with her fans. However, after the fact, the band thinks that they were possibly too honest (because a lot of early fans were divided in their hatred for Jon or the Bennet twins, because obviously when the founding members of a band break up battle lines have been drawn), but their openness is, really, a good thing. I feel like I know SPG, and I understand why they do the things that they do. This is why I was stoked to meet the new member, Sam “Hatchworth” Luke (okay, so he wasn’t new, but whatever).

In the case of The Lizzie Bennet Diaries, a modern vlog adaptation of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, from the beginning, viewers were consulted. We were told to stay in contact via facebook, tumblr, twitter, and google + (like anybody uses that). I subscribed to all of the above (I have a google + account, zomygosh!) and so I am always always always in the know about my favorite fictional characters.

For example, take YESTERDAY MORNING. I woke up, went on facebook (it’s like brushing your teeth, you are required to check facebook in the mornings, it is law) and saw that Pemberly Digital, one of the…for lack of a better word…widgets of LBD, had posted a quote: “Today is the day that everything changes.”

OH

MY

STARS

ABOVE

Something was going to happen. Sure enough, a video was released later that day by Gigi (Georgiana Darcy), hinting at future events. 

It was not until 11 a.m. that we saw the first ramifications of “everything changes.” For those of you who don’t watch LBD, I won’t spoil it (or confuse you further), but something traumatic rippled the fandom. People got upset. People were confused. I cried. Brooke laughed at me. Then, at 12, one of the characters sent out an SOS on twitter.

This right here, folks, is the use of three different websites used for one purpose. It is an interactional television show in real time, in real life. No 7 second delay.  

Today in class, we were discussing the openness of media. Should everything be as open as my YouTube videos, as my bands? Should—gasp—businesses be required to open up everything to the reader, to release PR reports supporting their choices, as Bernie Su, one of the writers of LBD, did today?

Is this the future? Will I, an audience member, be able to watch in real time as Toyota builds a car? Will I be able to offer input? Will the creations that I and others I collaborate with via the internet someday become real and tangible things? Is this terrifying? ABSOLUTELY. The future is always terrifying.

But as for me, I am liking what I see.

Keane Came to Royal Oak

The Royal Oak Farmer’s Market was right next to the 44^th District Court. Laura pulled into a parking spot right in front of the austere building, made of sandstone and dotted with gold letters. Next to it, the Farmer’s Market looked small and old. There were a few stalls out there, with Russian-looking fur caps and a few old men.

We got out of the car and hurried towards the Market. I pulled my thin white jacket closer to myself, stuffing my fingers in the pockets. Michigan was cold and gloomy. The sky was a bluish white.

Inside, there were stalls full of old things—recycled things—a garage sale. I had been expecting Saint George’s Market in America, full of jewelry and original ware and food. “Where will we find Sarah?” Laura asked.

“We’ll find her,” I said. The market was only so large, after all.

We passed a man selling caramel popcorn. “The best caramel popcorn in the world!” he said, giving Laura and I eat a taste.

“The secret is, it’s baked, so the flavor goes right into the corn,” the man said. Laura bought a back, and I slowly sucked on the kernels he had given me.

“There she is,” Laura said, the first to see Dirty Girl Farms. There was a small table full of soaps, little rectangular blocks with different color spirals in them, and then lotions smelling of Lavender, Olive Oil, Hemp, Cucumber. Next to that stall was honey. I thought immediately of Chalice and the school Laura and Sarah have been talking about opening.

Sarah was with a customer, so Laura and I poked around the stall. It was crunched next to a man selling jewelry, also recycled; he was on the phone. I looked at the different perfumes—Bohemian Rose, Good Karma, Fairy Dust, and my favorite, Black Magic.  One entire wall was filled up with herbs and things I had never heard of; natural medicines and flavoring and bits and pieces. There were a few pieces of tea, to make your own loose-leaf at home.

Sarah talked to me about the different types of perfumes, and what was in them (because, as a Bath & Body Works associate, I find this very fascinating), and then I went and haggled over a set of ruby red goblets for her. By then the market was set to close; we had been later than we thought. Laura and I followed Sarah’s car to her house, down a bunch of side-streets to a duplex full of colonial-looking buildings, red bricked and white columned. Then we were off to Royal Oak again, in Sarah’s car, the TARDIS, to The Yellow Door and other little cute shops. My sister’s 18^th birthday is this Friday, and I wanted to find her something special. We wandered through all sorts of artwork, barrettes and rocks decorated to look human, picking up rings and books and stuffed animals. One of the stores we went to even had a ginger cat, asleep in a box full of random trinkets.

Stores close early on Sundays, especially the ones run independently, and so by six we found ourselves at Noodles & Company for dinner. I always get American Buttered Noodles, but after four months of eating very little but buttered noodles, I was finding that it was a little bland and tasteless. Sarah and Laura opted for more original, colorful dinners. I sipped my Izzie and stared at people as they passed by the window. Outside, all of the trees were wrapped with blue Christmas lights. I was glad they hadn’t been taken down yet. There weren’t many Christmas lights in Belfast, not the way we do it in America, and it was nice to see them still up and shining cheerfully in January. 

 Barnes & Noble, as a big corporation, was still open when we finished eating, and so we loitered there for awhile, picking up huge copies of Moby Dick, comparing Sherlock volumes, and making Laura promise to buy us copies this summer when she studies at King’s College London. She’s decided to take a summer class there on Jane Austen, so she’ll get to visit Bath. Most likely she will get to see the London Eye and Baker street to, and so the rest of us Sherlock fangirls are secretly pouting. 

 We got to the concert early and decided to stand on the periphery. Sarah’s boss from Dirty Girl Farms was there with her husband, and they kept popping in, making sure we were doing all right. All of the lights were blue, except for the ceiling, which was red, and I keep feeling like I was underwater. 

By the time the concert started there were a lot of people—I really don’t know how many. The opening act was Youngbloode Hawk, whose singer came on with long curly hair and a black and white polka dotted shirt that looked like it was made of that flimsy, static-y fabric. For a very long time I questioned his fashion sense, but he and the drummer were really good at beating the life out of the drums, so that I could feel the musical vibrations pulsing in my legs and in my heart—when the beating of your heart echoes the beating of the drums—and I got into it, bobbing slowly. 

Sarah and Laura, getting ready for Keane!

 Of course, we really came to see Keane, a British band made popular by “Somewhere Only We Know” and “Is It Any Wonder?” They came to promote their newest album, Strangeland. I loved the title. It reminded me of 30 Seconds to Mars--a stranger in a strange land. They were strangers in a strange land; it was their first time in Royal Oak. Everyone was really excited to see their Strangers; their British strangers.

Laura had said earlier, “I’m just so excited to be breathing air from British lungs!” and I did not think that I would be so emotional during the concert. I’m not afraid of Eoghann, Madonna’s resident Brit and basketball player extraordinaire (this is probably a very illustrious title. I am not sure he deserves it. I do not understand basketball enough, but Laura and others have assured me Eoghann is good at basketball).  Americans tend to be very enthralled with the British, but I think we’re really similar in a lot of ways—and they tend to lose their glamour when they drape themselves over you reaching for a crisp, sing songs about strawberry jam, get off of the bus three stops early and walk in the rain because you accidentally hit the ‘stop’ button, and ask you what you thought of Jonathan Swift’s feminine aversion in Gulliver’s Travels (answer: Jonathan Swift was beginning his swift (hehe, a pun) into madness, including but not limited to hatred of sex, gender, and sexuality, especially women and their bodies, and natural things like going to the restroom. Gulliver’s Travels is not a children’s book or even a book that can be looked at from a feminist standpoint; IT IS A BOOK ABOUT A MAN WHO WANTED TO BECOME A HORSE.)

In other words, I have stopped seeing the British people as a race of demi-gods.

However, during the concert I realized just how much I missed accents, and the way different people talk. It was so nice to hear Keane’s accents and imagine myself back in Belfast; and for a long moment I actually could see myself back in the U.K., wandering through the streets. I had to pull myself back and listen to the music. Sarah and Laura kept looking around, making sure I wasn't wandering off (I have the tendency of doing that, especially when I'm interested in something). 

Keane was really a great concert. The singer was brilliant, and he had a good voice live, and the other members were fantastic. I loved their lights show; it wasn’t repetitive and it was beautiful. At the end they had lights come up like little dots, and wild, mixed metaphors ran around my head: rice being thrown at a wedding, fireflies, dandelion seeds.

When we left the theatre, there was at least an inch of snow on the ground, and the weather was even colder. I pulled my gloves out of my purse and put them on, shivering and sliding on the slush. The roads were bad, and Laura decided it would be safest to stay the night at Sarah’s.

Sarah has a beautiful house. It’s covered with arts pieces, funny magnets, and tons of books. She pulled out two mattresses from gosh-knows-where, and we went to sleep. I was thinking of robots and dandelion seeds when I dropped off to sleep.

It was still sleeting in the morning, but the roads had at least been plowed. Laura and I rescued the car from its blanket of ice and snow, and took the perilous road back to Madonna. From there, I ran to get changed and ready and meet Hannah and Professor Andonian, who sent us to Northern Ireland. She still needed to get her present, and she wanted to ask us about our Experience and then interview us a little bit. She’s going to have us each interview each other about what happened, and then use it to send others abroad.

Only one other person is interested in going to Queen’s: Twizzler.

Anyway, the Keane concert was brilliant, and I had a great time. Sarah and Laura were great concert buddies, and no mosh pits were formed and few people were drinking in front of me! So the puritan in me was happy, and so was the hippy. Now I’m busy all this week—it’s hard work promoting feminism in a campus where everyone is “equal” already, and then we’re trying to get the Sociology group out from the underground, and I had to write a paper about Unions and Michigan and Right to Work, and then I have a fifteen minute presentation on Proto-Indo-European languages with a focus on Germanic that’s due………….soon.

And the printer stopped working.

And I think my new hand lotion is giving me a headache. That, or it’s bedtime for this chick.

Busy, busy, busy bee. 

Ag, headache.