Horror at the Dentist

Spoiler alert: the horror has nothing to do with my teeth.
 
I came home Friday before last and went to the dentist on Monday. All the little rooms in the dentist’s office have screens, and in dentist visits past those screens have shown the exploits of various aquatic creatures. This time I was presented not with ocean adventures but Seasonal Forests.
 
I read the title on the screen and expected some relatively dull panoramic and overhead shots of rocks and trees. There would be peace and tranquility in the wonderful land of nature, and I would be utterly bored without the usual funny-looking fishies.
 
OH, HOW WRONG I WAS.
 
The video started with a snowy forest and a small dark furry thing trudging across the landscape. I’m pretty zoologically savvy, but I couldn’t quite identify it. (I’ve since done a little research and believe it to have been a wolverine.) It made its way up to a lighter-colored furry thing and began pawing at it until I could see that it was bloody and dead. Then the dark furry thing quite simply made off with a limb.
 
I did not sign up for this, I thought to myself, staring at the screen with a wide-open mouth while the hygienist picked at my teeth.
 
It is a truth acknowledged by most anyone over the age of maybe four or so that fish eat other fish. But for some reason, there’s nothing unsettling about watching a bloodless gulp. There’s a fish, just minding his own—whoops, there he goes—wrong place at the wrong time, bro. Not so in the Seasonal Forest with the carrion-eating wolverine!
 
Next were large turkey-like birds with large bodies close to the ground and magnificent plumage blooming from their behinds. Again I wished for narration to tell me what they were. I expected a slow peacock strut, but these guys ran like ninjas. I remember a moose whose solitary journey was captured by a stunning helicopter shot, which was awesome.
 
My favorite featured creatures were the baby ducks because only soulless people are immune to the charm of baby ducks. At first I was mildly surprised to see a mama duck in a tree. To my delight, the camera showed several ducklings also inside the tree. To my alarm, the ducklings waddled out to the edge of the hole and literally fell out of the tree and onto the ground after their mother. A camera on the forest floor showed how they bounced when they hit bottom.
 
There were only four ducklings wandering off after their mama in the end, but I probably watched each of them fall twice if not three times. The crash landings had been shown from different angles at different speeds, reminding me of a bizarre video game. Catch the baby ducks! Guide the baby ducks to a target on the ground! See how high you can make the baby ducks bounce!
 
There were of course blossoming flowers to accompany the baby animal segment. I watched way too many time-lapsed explosions of pistils and stamens. Not going to lie, it was a little unsettling. Weirder still was the fact that I was subjected to the whole thing in reverse as well. At one point, the camera focused on a plot of pansy-like flowers in yellow and violet. The video moved faster and slower, faster and slower, and the development of the flowers progressed and regressed, progressed and regressed.
 
Is this what being on drugs is like? I wondered, lying sedately in the chair, waiting for the x-ray results.
 
Not long after came some…lovely…insect footage. With additional research I’ve determined that these were the seventeen-year cicadas that swarmed the East Coast when I was in fourth grade. They’re supposed to be coming back this year, which is distressing. I thought I wouldn’t have to deal with them until I was twenty-five, but apparently there are different broods with cycles set a few years apart. The video was only slightly short of terrifying. Brought back some enchanting memories. Can’t wait for the return of the devil spawn!
 
I was at the dentist for a pretty long time. The doctor had been out at a meeting and came a little late, and there was a problem with my x-ray results showing up on the computer screen. All this meant that I was still in the chair when the video ended. The screen went black and the credits rolled.
 
Narration by Sigourney Weaver? Music by the BBC Concert Orchestra? What is this? I thought.
 
I had started off thinking that the video was supposed to be the visual equivalent of elevator music. Turned out to be the tenth episode of Planet Earth. The horrors of the food chain, the careening ducklings, the psychedelic plant remix, and the horde of demon bugs all suddenly made sense.

This is a documentary television series meant to show nature in all of its cruel and disturbing glory, I said to myself wisely. Not meant for the serenity of bored or anxious dental patients. But then why on earth were they playing it at the dentist? I would have loved the educational aspect of it if there had been some way of knowing what the heck was going on, but I’m not sure how universal that feeling is.

 
I guess I feel the same way about nature as some people feel about the dentist. I’m not afraid of the dentist. It’s a bit unpleasant, but nothing about it scares me. Nature, on the other hand… nature is frightening! Nature is weird and gross and will surprise you just when you think you’ve got it figured out.

With nature and dentistry both, you think that everything is reasonable and then you discover something horrifying.

 
Brush your teeth and never go to Australia.

--Bridget

Elegy for a Pool

I brought my swimsuit and goggles at the beginning of the year, stuffed them into the outside pocket of my suitcase the day before we drove up for first-year move-in. But for one reason or another, I never felt like swimming. I had dance classes, I had rehearsals, I had books to read and papers to write.

With a sense that time really has run out, I borrow my roommate’s swim cap (oh, the glamor) and head to the basement of our central building. I find the locker room, leave my stuff unattended, sign in, and wade into an empty lane. There are two guards and one other swimmer, and it is very quiet.

As I paddle myself across and back, I’m very glad I learned to swim as a kid. Thanks, I think in the general direction of my mother. I’ve never had a passion for swimming—it wears me out, and getting water in your nose hurts­—but I’m comfortable in the water. I put my head under, my legs give me a good start off the wall, and there I go. I’m determined to stay in the lane for at least a half-hour.

As in dance and music and writing, I find the peace of concentration in my slow breaststroke. I have upcoming exams and a paper to revise, but it’s hard to think about Integrated Pest Management and the Crittenden Compromise and To the Lighthouse when you’re swimming. It’s hard to think about anything but swimming when you’re swimming. Your head bobs up and down, up and down, and you experience the mental equivalent of… not of white noise, but ambient music. Not waiting-room-elevator-your-call-is-very-important-to-us music either. This music is softer and gentler.

How funny that you can move through water in ways you can't move through air…

You’re going to cut your hair short when you get home, it will probably look fantastic…

A boy you had a crush on an age ago, why are you thinking about him…

Caught in a wild ocean, waiting for rescue, a giant whale sails past…

The muscles in your back, the muscles in your legs, the synchronicity of the body…

You’re going to cut your hair short when you get home, it will probably be a disaster…

A little girl comes for her swimming lesson. She is too cute. It makes me sad that she’ll never have another lesson in this pool, which is closed as of today.

It isn’t going to reopen in the fall, either. They’re filling it with concrete and using it as storage space while they renovate the library, or so I hear. Not that they’ll have the money to renovate anything for a few years, so that makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it? Also if they wanted storage space, why fill the pool? You could totally store stuff in an empty pool, right?

It’s not like I know anything about development, but it seems a great shame. What about all the little kids who need their swimming lessons? What about the student lifeguards who are out of a job? What about students who will have to trek across the street to the big university pool and trudge back all wet and gross?

Goodbye, fair pool. I hardly knew you. I’m not sure your loss will have too much of an impact on me personally. But when the urge to swim strikes again, I will regret the time we did not spend together and denounce the administration that decided you were unworthy of a place on campus.

--Bridget

Sit Up Straight and Take Up Space

My college used to teach posture classes. I’ve seen a few excellent photographs from 1954 that show the young ladies of the school wearing silly-looking pinafores and executing various silly-looking exercises. It is an antiquated thing, a snippet of a fifties culture that emphasized propriety. Surely the students at men’s or coeducational institutions were not required to take posture classes! The situation seems to reveal a focus on appearances that is not particularly progressive.

So why do I think we should bring them back?

I want to take this class, maybe instead of my Social Analysis requirement.

I’m a dancer, so I spend a ton of time thinking about bodies and space. I guess it’s pretty weird, actually, the way I process my own motion. (It served me well in a final project I wrote for a class last semester, describing the choreography of my daily life. I may publish this later.) Only recently have I begun really thinking about why I take the stances I do: in the classroom, on the subway, at the store counter. The more I think about posture, the more I think it is absolutely vital to a culture of equality.

“Whoa, Bridget,” you are undoubtedly saying. “Hold on and back up. Did you remember to take your meds this morning? The ones that prevent your overdramatic, baseless philosophizing?”

I’ll start with what I mean by posture. I am not referring only to the curvature of the lower spine (where you might think of “slouching”). That’s very important, but you can think about the concept in a much more complex, holistic way.

POSTURE INCLUDES:

1.      the alignment of the spine (straightness and curvature)

2.      the placement of the shoulders (toward or away from the collarbone or ears)

3.      the position of the head (lifted, tilted, bowed)

4.      the orientation of the knees (bent, straight, together, apart)

5.      the relationship of the feet (wide or narrow)

6.      the configuration of the arms (too many to list)

7.      probably some other stuff I’m not thinking of right now

We are evaluated by our posture, categorized by our posture, treated how our posture indicates we ought to be treated. I think it is very likely that we are socialized to stand differently on the basis of our sex. Males are taught to command space and attention with their bodies; females are taught to deflect space and attention with theirs. (Of course, I’ve known women who commanded space and attention, and I’ve known men who deflected it. What I mean is that there is a gender-coding that manifests itself in daily life and associates certain poses with masculinity and femininity.)

Inspired by the documentary Killing Us Softly 4, I have been observing how female models in advertisements are posed. Oftentimes their shoulders are raised and bowled, their knees are knocked and crossed, their torsos shortened with curved or twisted spines. There is a two-part philosophy espoused by such images: (1) women should not assume stances of authority and power, and (2) women should take up as little space as possible.

Maybe this works in advertising, when the model’s [Photoshop-created] beauty and the zoom of the lens demand the consideration of the viewer. But it sure as heck doesn’t work in real life. If you make yourself small, you make yourself unimportant. Trying to remove yourself from the space you could very well be possessing is equivalent to trying to remove yourself from the awareness of other people.

This is why we need posture class. We need to learn how to sit up straight and take up space.

Fierceness may vary.

Women and men alike need to know how to sit and stand in order to be successful, to communicate knowledge and ability. For girls who are led to believe that they are more attractive when they take up less space (hello, eating disorders), this is especially important. Good posture combats insidious notions about the comparative value of male and female minds.

Try it at the seminar table, try it on the subway car, try it when you talk to your professor or your boss or your mom. Plant your feet wider than your hips, pull your shoulder-blades down and together, relax your arms, keep your chin level. It isn’t about aggression or intimidation or even really about size. It’s about that fact that you deserve the attention of the world and that you deserve the same space any other individual. You just need to claim it with your body.

--Bridget

“This isn’t going to cause me any future trauma, right?”: A Les Mis Movie Parody

BACKGROUND MUSIC: *distant drums*
AUDIENCE: Say, do you hear the… never mind. Does Les Mis begin underwater? I don’t remember this from the stage production.
 
VALJEAN: Behold, I am a dirty and sad-looking man among dirty and sad-looking men.
CHAIN GANG: We are a dirty and sad-looking choir of sorrow.
JAVERT: I’m standing in a high place. You’ll see me doing this often. It has nothing to do with authority issues or a troubled childhood among the scum of the earth. Nope.
 
FRENCH FLAG: *is lying meaningfully in the mud*
AUDIENCE: I guess this is going to be one of those symbolic movies.
 
JAVERT: Hey, you. Pick up the flag on that heavy mast over there for no reason whatsoever!
VALJEAN: Okay. *picks up flag on heavy mast for no reason whatsoever*
JAVERT: After that irrelevant task, you are free to go—
VALJEAN: J
JAVERT: —with identification papers that prevent you from living even a halfway decent life.
VALJEAN: L
 
BISHOP: I am kindly, elderly, and magically appearing! You know what that means!
VALJEAN: It means...you’re my Catholic fairy godmother?
BISHOP: We can work with that.
HOUSEKEEPING LADIES: Feel the burn of our judgment, hobo.
 
VALJEAN: I must experience a dramatic rebirth before the opening credits, and so I need a suitably dramatic setting in which to shred these identification papers. I think this graveyard will do.
AUDIENCE: Yup, definitely one of those symbolic movies.
 
SUBSTANTIAL PIECE OF TORN PAPER: *drifts into 1823*
 
PEOPLE OF PARIS: And the plague is coming on fast, ready to kill~
AUDIENCE: Wait, doesn’t the line go, “And the winter is coming on fast, ready to kill”?
PEOPLE OF PARIS: Well, winter is coming was kind of already taken.
 
FACTORY WOMEN: Look at Fantine in her modest pink dress, the skank! We should read her mail.
FANTINE: No, you should not!
FACTORY WOMEN: Ooh, would you look at that! She’s got a secret child!
FANTINE: Your mom has a secret child.
FACTORY WOMEN: ?
FANTINE: It was one of those comebacks that sounded better in my head.
 
VALJEAN: *swoops in, now with better hair*
VALJEAN: What’s going on here?
JAVERT: *appears in high window*
VALJEAN: Oh crap, it’s that cop with authority issues.
VALJEAN: Foreman, just…deal.
 
FOREMAN: Okay, what’s actually going on here?
FACTORY WOMEN: The girl in the modest pink dress is a total skank!
FOREMAN: I knew it! Women with boundaries are always secretly awful. OUT!
FANTINE: That escalated quickly.
 
JAVERT: It seems to me we may have met~
VALJEAN: Your face is not a face I would forget~
JAVERT: …what do you mean by that?
 
FANTINE: There is nothing about my situation that could be manipulated into anything remotely humorous.
 
JAVERT: You remind me of a man.
VALJEAN: What man?
JAVERT: The man with the power.
VALJEAN: What power?
JAVERT: The power to lift heavy objects.
VALJEAN: Lots of people have that power.
JAVERT: Yeah I guess.
 
JAVERT: What’s going on here?
SLEAZY GUY: I accidentally wandered into prostitute territory, and they are vicious. Women without boundaries, am I right?
JAVERT: It’ll be off to jail for you, dying woman.
FANTINE: BUT I HAVE A CHILD.
JAVERT: That’s what they all say. Oh, hey. What are you doing here?
VALJEAN: Being a badass.
FANTINE: You! You ran off when I needed you most!
VALJEAN: I will see to it that you can die in peace.
FANTINE: There aren’t very many other options for me at this point!
 
JAVERT: MONSIEUR I AM A TERRIBLE COP. I BASICALLY DESERVE UTTER SHAME.
VALJEAN: Nope. No authority issues at all.
JAVERT: I mistook you for a runaway who broke his parole.
VALJEAN: Is that…so?
JAVERT: But we caught him!
VALJEAN: Is that…so?
JAVERT: Yup. He couldn’t outrun the law forever!
VALJEAN: Hm. Yeah. We’ll see, won’t we?
JAVERT: What was that?
VALJEAN: Nothing, nothing! Just…go about your business!
 
VALJEAN: Once more to the throes of torturous moral conundrums!
AUDIENCE: How many crises of conscience is this man going to have during this movie? He’s already had two, and it’s hardly been half an hour.
 
VALJEAN: I am 24601!
DERPY VALJEAN LOOKALIKE: Whoa I thought this kind of crap only happened on TV!
COURT: By “24601” do you mean “high”? Or perhaps “mentally unstable”?
 
FANTINE: It is fairly obvious that I am dying now.
MINI COSETTE: *appears*
FANTINE: My Cosette!
VALJEAN: Um, I hate to break it to you, but Cosette isn’t going to be here for aw—
MINI COSETTE: *disappears*
FANTINE: *dies*
VALJEAN: This is all a bit sad, isn’t it?
JAVERT: Fancy seeing you here.

VALJEAN: Can this wait? I promised my Catholic fairy godmother that I’d do my best to mitigate human suffering. Or something to that effect.

JAVERT: …I’m not even going to ask. Fencing?
VALJEAN: I don’t see why not.
JAVERT & VALJEAN: *musical fencing*
VALJEAN: *leaps into unidentified body of water *
AUDIENCE: ?
JAVERT: I draw the line at swimming!

MINI COSETTE: I am a beautiful child and my situation is very sad. Maybe I am secretly a princess? Wait, no, that’s not a good thing in this historical era. Never mind.
MADAME THENARDIER: On your way, Cosette! No one likes you!

MINI EPONINE: Seriously though. Everyone who sees this musical hates you. All teenage girls think that they’re me. And in this movie, I turn out way hotter than you.

MINI COSETTE: My life is so unfair.
 
VALJEAN: I have come to save Cosette from your evil clutches.
THENARDIERS: …what evil clutches?
VALJEAN: Don’t pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about. I’m taking Cosette away.
THENARDIERS: Oh no, we can’t have that!
MINI COSETTE: Somehow I was expecting something a little more along the lines of “don’t let the door hit you on the way out.”
 
JAVERT: Did you know that I have exactly one hobby? It’s walking precariously along high ledges. I am 100%sure that nothing terrible will ever come of this.
                                                                                                        
VALJEAN: Cosette, wake up!  You must be very quiet. We have to sneak around the gates of Paris.
MINI COSETTE: This isn’t going to cause me any future trauma, right?
VALJEAN: *flourishes rope *
AUDIENCE: ?
VALJEAN: *ascends/descends walls*
MINI COSETTE: I seem to have been adopted by a ninja master.
CARRIAGE DRIVER: How long have I been driving this empty carriage?
 
SOME YEARS: *pass very quickly*
 
GAVROCHE: I’m here to give you a political summary and some rudimentary philosophical discourse while looking cute as a button…that is, a button that’s been rolling around in the dirt for a bit.  You’ll fall for me big time, and when I die later you’ll be emotionally scarred.
 
ENJOLRAS & MARIUS: Preaching revolution to the masses! All eyes on us!
ENJOLRAS & MARIUS: Also, we are pretty fine.
ENJOLRAS & MARIUS: Do you think these things are at all related?
PEOPLE OF PARIS: Sorry, what were you saying?
 
JAVERT: I manage to be everywhere despite not having a first name.
 
EPONINE: Hey Marius. Are you at all interested in this foxiness?
MARIUS: Hey Eponine. Gotta run. Catch you later! J
AUDIENCE: WHERE ARE YOUR EYES, MAN?
 
MARIUS: Just walking on this street, very casual.
COSETTE: I am super cute and blond and wearing a hat!
MARIUS: HOLY CRAP IT’S A GIRL.
AUDIENCE: I guess he found his eyes.
 
MARIUS: Listen, Eponine. I need you to find this girl for me. I am instantaneously, madly in love with her.
EPONINE: WTF.
MARIUS: I knew I could count on you to help me out!
EPONINE: This is, like, beyond the friend zone. This is, like, the GPS zone.
 
MARIUS: There was this girl…
ENJOLRAS: Are you kidding me?
MARIUS: If you had only seen her, you would understand!
ENJOLRAS: Not into girls, remember?
MARIUS: You’re not? Wait, does that mean...do you have a crush on me, man?
ENJOLRAS: No, dumbass. I’m into France.
MARIUS: That kind of explains your irrational actions later in this movie.
 
COSETTE: Gosh, that slightly creepy guy who was staring at me on the street was pretty fine, but being in love is a bit challenging when you are the loneliest girl in the entire country of France.
VALJEAN: Cosette, I worry about you. I feel like you might be the loneliest girl in the entire country of France.
COSETTE: Papa, why don’t you tell me about your mysterious past in order to shed some light on why I am the loneliest girl in the entire country of France?
VALJEAN: Nope.
COSETTE: Well, then. Off to the garden to meet with my newfound love in spite of your commands!
 
MARIUS: We are madly in love!
COSETTE: We are perfect together!
EPONINE: You only love her because she sings a higher voice part! Nobody ever pays any attention to the voyeur mezzo!
 
VALJEAN: Cosette, I am completely overreacting to a scream I heard on the street outside! That’s it, we are moving to England!
COSETTE: My life is so unfair.
 
EPONINE: In the rain, the pavement shines like silver~
AUDIENCE: Would you look at that? It totally does.
EPONINE: All the lights are misty in the river~
AUDIENCE: And…wait. What river?
EPONINE: In the darkness, the trees are full of starlight~
AUDIENCE: Okay, I don’t think we’ve seen a tree since Mini Cosette was lost in the forest.
EPONINE: I’m just going to sit down here while I finish my song about walking.
AUDIENCE: …
EPONINE: The trees are bare and everywhere the streets are full of strangers~
SHADOWY STRANGER: *walks past*
AUDIENCE: I guess now we can’t complain about the total absence of anyone else on the streets?
 
ENJOLRAS: Watch me stop an entire parade with my magnificent good looks!
PEOPLE OF PARIS: Gladly.
MARIUS: Mine, too!
PEOPLE OF PARIS: Even better.
 
ENJOLRAS: People of Paris! We need all your furniture!
LES AMIS: Why? We already have enough empty chairs and empty tables.
ENJOLRAS: We need them to build our barricade.
LES AMIS: Seems structurally unsound. Can we use this cow?
COW: ‘sup.
ENJOLRAS: Exactly how drunk have you been for the entire time I’ve known you guys?
 
BARRICADE: *appears to have two coffins displayed front and center*
AUDIENCE: You know, there’s a difference between foreshadowing and taking a brick to the face.
 
GAVROCHE: A letter from the barricade!
VALJEAN: You stay away from that barricade, okay?
GAVROCHE: …what barricade?
 
ENJOLRAS: Okay, everyone! Time to fight!
MARIUS: YES!
EPONINE: *is shot*
MARIUS: NO!
EPONINE: Marius, here’s a letter from Cosette. Also I love you.
MARIUS: Oh dear.
EPONINE: *dies*
MARIUS: SHE’S DEAD.
AUDIENCE: AND WHAT DID YOU THINK THE PRIMARY FUNCTION OF GUNS WAS?
 
MARIUS: Can’t…stop…stacking…chairs…
ENJOLRAS: Marius, you need to take a chill pill.
VALJEAN: Oh, so that’s Marius. Huh. I sure hope he doesn’t die.
 
SOLDIER DUDE: If you’d allow me to make a suggestion—now would be an excellent time to surrender.
ENJOLRAS: I regret nothing!
LES AMIS: We do not feel the same way.
 
GAVROCHE: *dies*
AUDIENCE: Remind us why we are even watching this movie anymore.
AUDIENCE: No, seriously, remind us.
AUDIENCE: Because it’s starting to feel like a long time.
 
ENJOLRAS: I’ve just been shot dead, but even though I’m hanging upside-down out of a window I’m still sexy as hell. People of Paris, you are lucky that it is my fine self on display here rather than, like, Courfeyrac or someone.
 
VALJEAN: Let’s take this show on the road. And by “on the road” I mean “into the sewers.”
JAVERT: Where are those funny sounds coming from?
VALJEAN: AUUUGHUHGGUHAAAUGH.
JAVERT: That’s weird.
VALJEAN & MARIUS: *slide into sewer*
THENARDIERS: Oh, hey. What are you doing here?
VALJEAN: Being a badass. Which way to the exit?
THENARDIERS: That way.
VALJEAN: *hoists Marius over shoulder, wades through incredible filth*
AUDIENCE: Excuse us while we physically recoil from the screen.
 
VALJEAN & MARIUS: *emerge from sewer*
JAVERT: *has never seemed cleaner*
VALJEAN: Can this wait? Catholic fairy godmother, human suffering, you know how it is.
JAVERT: Despite my rabid enthusiasm for hunting you across France, I think we had better end this here. Don’t take another step.
VALJEAN: *takes step*
VALJEAN: *keeps going*
JAVERT: Huh. That usually works.
 
JAVERT: So remember that “high places” motif that has nothing to do with power and authority issues?
 
PEOPLE OF PARIS: We eagerly await the invention of the garden hose.
 
MARIUS: I am a portrait of a broken man.
AUDIENCE: At least you aren’t shot dead and hanging upside-down out of a window.
MARIUS: Small consolation when you are surrounded by what are presumably the last remaining pieces of furniture within a quarter-mile radius.
 
COSETTE: Yay! Everything is going to be perfect!
MARIUS: You will never understand my trauma.
COSETTE: Have I ever told you about the time I was adopted by a ninja master?
 
VALJEAN: I have something very important to tell you, Marius.
MARIUS: Hooray! Man-to-man confidentiality!
VALJEAN: Long ago there was a prisoner who broke his parole and began living a lie to save himself and continued living a lie to save those whom he loved.
MARIUS: I might be way off base here, but I’m sensing a connection between you and this mysterious character you are describing.
VALJEAN: Don’t tell Cosette, okay? She’ll be devastated by my life of lies, even though I have been nothing but good to her for years and years.
MARIUS: That makes sense.
MARIUS: No, actually, it doesn’t.
VALJEAN: Tell her I’ve gone on a journey!
MARIUS: I expect a more convincing alibi from someone who evaded the law for 20+ years.
 
MARIUS: He said to tell you that he’s gone on a journey.
COSETTE: ?
MARIUS: That’s what I said!
 
THENARDIERS: Hey, how’s it going? We want to tell you about Cosette’s adoptive father and the corpse he was carrying through the sewers. We took the dead man’s ring.
MARIUS: Hey, that’s mine…
THENARDIERS: Oh.
MARIUS: And you know what? I’m not dead. WHICH MEANS I CAN PUNCH YOU IN THE FACE.
COSETTE: I may be missing something here.
MARIUS: Cosette, we are going to see your father!
COSETTE: Yup. Definitely missing something.
 
VALJEAN: I think I’ve led quite a fulfilling life.
COSETTE & MARIUS: WAIT NO WHAT ARE YOU DOING?
VALJEAN: I was just about to die in peace.
COSETTE & MARIUS: NO YOU CAN’T DO THAT.
VALJEAN: Well, no one really asked you...
MARIUS: Cosette, your father saved my life!
COSETTE: Nice of you to let me know now, I guess?
FANTINE: Hey there. Thanks for everything.
VALJEAN: Fantine…
FANTINE: Let’s go.
GHOST VALJEAN: *stands up and walks off all casual*
GHOST VALJEAN: So, Catholic fairy godmother… how’d I do?
BISHOP: You did great, son. You did great.
 
GHOST ENJOLRAS: Attention, people of Paris. My beautiful face has returned for your enjoyment..
LES GHOST AMIS: Best. Barricade. Ever. We know good engineering when we see it.
GHOST GAVROCHE: Hi.
AUDIENCE: AUUUGHUHGGUHAAAUGH.
AUDIENCE: Okay so there were some weird things about this movie BUT I FORGIVE THEM BECAUSE I HAVE SO MANY AMAZING AND TERRIFYING FEELINGS RIGHT NOW.

Of Past and Papacy

Scene 1
 
It is a little bit past eight in the morning. I am lying in bed, emerging from sleep. ROOMMATE is up and dressed and checking her phone.
 
ME: *shows signs of awakeness*
ROOMMATE: The Pope resigned!
ME: Wow.
ROOMMATE: It’s like the first time in 600 years that this has happened.
ME: That’s crazy.
ROOMMATE: *leaves room*
ME: *goes back to sleep*
 
Scene 2
 
It is now exactly 8:45. My alarm has just gone off, and I must begin my hectic day.
 
ME: I do not wish to leave my bed.
ME: I think I had really a weird dream.
ME: Yeah. Roommate told me that the Pope resigned.
ME: That never happens.
ME: My brain comes up with the weirdest #$%& sometimes.
 
Scene 3
 
It is lunchtime. After a busy morning, I am sitting down to a vaguely disappointing salad and checking my Facebook. As one does.
 
ME: Look, Roommate posted a link to a NYT article.
ME: The Pope resigned?!

-end-

 
So apparently the resignation of the Pope was not a fabrication of my subconscious mind, though it says something about my imagination that I would think it was. I have a minor interest in the papacy because of its longevity and its impact on, you know, the entire world. (The list of things in which I have a minor interest would probably come to several hundred entries including folk songs, monotremes, Russia, and the poetry of Edgar Allan Poe.) So this news is the sort that makes me very aware of existing in history.
 
Something I’ve been thinking about a lot recently is how all events are critical events and all eras are eras of change. I’m deeply suspicious of periods labeled with words like “stable” and “placid” and “Pax” because I can’t imagine an unchanging time or place. I once read some fiction-writing guidelines that advised a dynamic setting. Stories=change, and so this makes perfect sense. But what setting isn’t changing? It’s a mistake to think that humans anywhere at any time have achieved some sort of mystical equilibrium. I’m a person, I know many, and I know what we’re like. We are forces of change.

 

Forces of change.

 
But we are also wildly irrational. We’re frightened by the world of change we inhabit; we’re scared of our own hurtling dynamism. We’re too small to understand how we produce the incredible insanity that is the past. What I love about history is that it makes something immense (a story that is millennia long) out of something very tiny (the human lifetime). I can’t know what 600 years is like, but I can stand in awe of it. History accesses the human capacity for wonder.
 
What I hate about history is that you can’t work with it until it has inched its way into the part of the past beyond memory. You can’t get a really good look at something until it’s far away, but by then you’ve lost a vital connection to it. The consequences of Benedict XVI’s actions will be analyzed by my great-grandchildren after I’m dead (presuming that they come to love history and also acquire a minor interest in the papacy*).
 
Days like these make me feel like I’m living in crazy times. My rational mind was right to assume that the Pope doesn’t simply resign. It hasn’t happened since 1415. (Way to go, rational mind! You’re awesome.) But they also remind me that no one and nothing is safe from change. All times are crazy times, and history is something we make, not something that happens.
 
--Bridget
 
*If you happen to be reading this, great-grandchildren, I hope that you love history. It’s amazing. I’m a part of it, and so are you. And so is this blog, apparently, which worries me ever so slightly.

Ain't Nobody Got Time for That

A friend and I auditioned for the same student dance group on Sunday. We went to dinner afterwards and started talking about the college balancing act: what classes to take, how many to take, which groups to perform with, how many pieces to dance in, if we should add any other activities to the read/write/dance/sleep cycle we’d had since high school. My friend had withdrawn from sorority recruitment and was considering dropping a class. 
 
“I just want time,” she said.
 
I agreed. I want time more than just about anything else. My worst days tend to originate from overload: my lack of time to do the things that will make me a fulfilled and stable person.
 
I want time to submerge myself in my classes. There’s no way that I can read everything I’m supposed to, but I know that I’ll have a more meaningful education (and thusly a more meaningful life) the more I read. The discussion section I dread will become easier the more I sit myself in a chair and prepare for it. My essays will be stellar if I think through my ideas with care.
 
I want time to correspond. My resolve this year is to be better about communicating with the people I want in my life. The separation of first semester was rough, and I felt distant from the friends I had made in high school. But over winter break, I remembered that my friendships were strong, and I decided to keep them firmly in sight. That means I need to type emails, handwrite letters and cards, arrange Skype dates, respond to texts.
 
I want time to explore and to be spontaneous. I live in an amazing city—I told my mother yesterday that New York is just “more.” Cultural institutions abound, and many are incredibly accessible to me. If only I could get my act together and actually go to the Metropolitan Museum of Art or see Paul Taylor Dance Company. If I spot a poster for a cool lecture or performance on campus, I want to be able to drop everything and go.
 
I want time to deal.  Some days I find myself facing the ceiling and saying, “I can’t deal with this right now.” I sift through the contents of my desk and half of it falls on the floor, but I know other tasks take precedence over cleaning and organizing. I see an email that requires my immediate attention, which is already split between two other tasks and tomorrow’s to-do list. Frustration and procrastination result.
 
I want time to be a woman of leisure. I want to read excellent non-academic books and watch awesome television shows and write recreationally. I want to decorate my room and wear interesting outfits. I want to listen to new songs and fall in love with new artists. I want to read the news so I have a clue about what’s happening outside the bubble of my university.
 
Often I feel like I am supposed to do everything and to be able to do everything. I’m not sure why this is, and I don’t think now is the time to pseudo-psychoanalyze myself. But it is certainly pertinent to say that I cannot do everything I want to do and that I will hurt myself if I try.
 
This is a pretty somber post... I think I meant for it to be funnier? That didn’t happen! Next time I’ll write about awkward elevator experiences or attractive foreign celebrities or something.
 
--Bridget

It's Too Darn Cold

Many important things have happened to me in the past week. I returned to the city, started my second semester at college, watched the first half of the six-hour BBC Pride & Prejudice…. All very significant life events. But the dominating feature of this truly remarkable week was the bitter, bitter cold. It’s Jotunheim. It’s Hoth. It’s the Third Circle of Dante’s Inferno*.

It’s too darn cold.

 
When I venture out of doors, the air assaults every exposed inch of my skin. The chill seeps into my clothes. My fingers burn, my legs tingle, my face suffers paralysis. I’m adopting a new platform, people: when pants lose their effectiveness, they are no longer worthy of being called pants. What I’d call them instead, I’m not sure. But I would make my disappointment known!

I’m certainly wimpy when it comes to the cold, but this is getting ridiculous. Actually, it would be more accurate to say that it is making my fashion choices ridiculous. I wrapped a scarf around my head before leaving for the bookstore on Wednesday night and had no regrets. I tried to look decently stylish for the first week of classes, but it eventually came down to not taking off my coat and scarf (around my neck like a normal person would have it) in most of them.

Fortunately I received a semi-stylish coat from Santa this year. And the scarf makes me look like Sherlock. Well, I’m a short eighteen-year-old girl; it would take a lot more to make me look like Sherlock. But it makes me feel like Sherlock.

 
DOWNSIDE TO COLD WEATHER: Pain, misery, anguish. Pants rendered ineffective.
UPSIDE TO COLD WEATHER: Sometimes I feel like Sherlock?

I cannot take this much longer.

-Bridget

 

*And the quantity of brownie-substance I consumed today would indicate that I belong there.