Whip It Good
I saw Whip It yesterday. I didn’t know if I was going to get to see it in theaters; my personal life has been a bit of a mess lately, with family emergencies piling on top of each other, and a lot of my friends had already seen it by the time I was available to be social again. But a few of us managed to go last night, and I am so, so glad I did.
Was it a perfect movie? No. The plot was on the side of predictable, and subplots involving the protagonist’s opponents in a beauty pageant and enemies at school were never developed quite enough. But the cast was universally excellent, and the way the film handled family, love, and especially female friendship was absolutely fantastic. And in at least one way, the movie was, despite its predictability, wonderfully subversive.
Spoilers for Whip It follow.
Building a House with Bruce Springsteen
On the evening of May 23rd, halfway through a performance of “Working on a Dream,” the title track off of his latest album with the E Street Band, Bruce Springsteen addressed the audience at New Jersey‘s IZOD Center. In the hazy afterglow of the concert, I can‘t remember his exact words, but I remember the gist well enough to paraphrase. “We’re here to build a house,” he said. “To build a house of joy out of sadness. To build a house of love out of hate.” His house-building litany continued for quite some time, rising in fervor like a sermon. This wasn’t a house he could build himself, he explained. It was the combined energy of the thousands of people in that room who were building that house, that house of love and joy and hope and peace and inspiration and creation. And as the speech crescendoed, and Springsteen launched into the song’s optimistic chorus, those thousands of people cheered, and sang along, and believed it.
I’ve never been a music person. It isn’t that I don’t like music — I do, quite a bit. But I don’t understand it, and I’m not capable of producing it. I can’t sing, I can’t read notes on a page, and I’m so tone deaf that I honestly couldn’t tell if someone was singing horrendously off-key. I can’t identify different musicians in recordings — most of the time, I can’t even identify different instruments. And even my lyrical analysis skills are somewhat weak — poetry was never my forte in my literary studies.
But what I can do, with music, is feel it. Experience it. Let it lift me up and envelop me and change my mood and inspire me in a million mysterious ways that I am powerless to understand. And that is what my first Bruce Springsteen concert was: an awe-inspiring experience whose power I don’t possess the ability to explain.
I’ve only been a Springsteen fan for less than two years, when some friends introduced me to his music. But once they did, it immediately clicked with me. This was, in part, due to the New Jersey connection. Bruce Springsteen sings about a world that I know, a central New Jersey universe of highways and boardwalks and working class dreams. But I also found, in his music, reflections of even my non-Jersey-specific experiences. Friendship and adolescence. Struggle and confusion. Dreams of escape. The desire to create. During my senior year of college, the song “Badlands” helped me through the struggle of my senior thesis — “It ain’t no sin to be glad you’re alive,” Bruce reminded me — and when my grandfather died near the end of that school year, it was “Mary’s Place,” a song about hope and happiness and survival even in the face of a loved one’s death, that helped me get through it. Springsteen came to mean a lot to me in a very short period of time, and when I finally got the chance to go to a concert last Saturday, it felt like something I’d been building toward all along.
The concert opened with “Badlands.” Nothing could have pleased me more. I was on my feet, dancing and singing my heart out, screaming that line that had helped me through my thesis at the top of my lungs. Next up was “Spirit in the Night,” a personal favorite. After that, the concert got more mellow — “Outlaw Pete“ and “Something in the Night.” I took the opportunity to sit down, and rest, and take everything in. But I and everyone else around me was up and dancing again during “Out in the Street,” and then there was that magical rendition of “Working on a Dream.”
The concert mellowed out again after that. “Seeds” was next, and it was the only song I didn’t know — I had to ask my friend, who’d come with me to the concert, to identify it for me. This was followed by a rollicking version of “Johnny 99,” and the spooky “The Ghost of Tom Joad.” And then there were the signs, when Springsteen collected requests from the audience members who had brought along posters with their pleas.
Before launching into the sign requests, the band played a cover of “Good Lovin’,” which made me smile. The last time I’d been to a concert in this particular arena was in 1998, the summer before 7th grade, and it was to see Hanson. I can say with authority that Hanson and Bruce Springsteen have absolutely nothing in common besides being adored by me. But during that concert 11 years ago, Hanson played a cover of “Good Lovin’.” As the E Street Band played the opening chords, I looked over at the section of the arena I remembered sitting in over a decade before, and it was a nice moment of circular nostalgia.
The first two sign requests were “E Street Shuffle” and “Cover Me,” both good songs but not ones that particularly excited me. But the third, and the one that created the biggest cheer of the night, was “Thunder Road.”
Earlier that day, I’d watched the VH1 “Storytellers” episode that Springsteen had been on, and in that episode he talked about how “Thunder Road” is an invitation — an invitation to the listeners to take a ride, to take a leap of faith, to do what they’ve always wanted to do. At that moment, all I wanted to do was create — to run home and write a novel and apply for my dream jobs and maybe even save the world. That is the power of his music.
After that, the rest of the concert was almost a blur. “Waiting on a Sunny Day” was only notable for the part where Bruce let an 8-year-old girl in the pit sing the chorus into his microphone. “The Promised Land” was excellent. “Incident on 57th Street“ was a rare treat. “Kingdom of Days” was lovely. Then there was the one-two punch of “Lonesome Day” and “The Rising,” and all the hope and inspiration the crowd had felt during “Working on a Dream” came back in spades. “The Rising” is an inspirational song to begin with; in a crowd of thousands of people singing along, it’s transcendent.
And the final songs continued to ride that wave. “Born to Run,” my “driving New Jersey highways” favorite (I live right off of “Highway 9,” after all). A cover of an old folk song called “Hard Times.” The instrumental craziness of “Kitty’s Back.” “Land of Hope and Dreams,” the song I listened to on repeat on election day, crying from hope and worry. The dancing optimism of “American Land.” “Glory Days,” the old standard. And then, finally, a jubilant cover of “Mony Mony.”
I’ve been focusing largely on Bruce himself in this write-up, but it’s worth noting that the E Street Band was as excellent as I’d always been told. They had so much energy it was almost unbelievable — during a pause in “Johnny 99,” Bruce, Max, and Little Steven had a gag where they just stared at the audience, turning their heads from side to side and looking confused, and I can honestly say that that was the only moment during the concert where I thought, “Oh my God, they’re tired old men.” In the next moment, they were back, bouncing and grinning and transformed 20 years younger. The various instrumental solos during “Kitty’s Back” were absolutely amazing, especially for so late in the 3-hour show, and I was really happy to see Max on drums, since I know he wasn‘t there for parts of the toru. It disappointed me slightly that Patti Scialfa wasn’t present, but I’m glad she was able to be with her daughter in her own travels, the explanation Bruce gave before “Kingdom of Days.”
And the band was fun, too. I know I’ve spoken a lot about how inspirational and magical the concert was, but there were silly moments, too — dancing and mugging for the camera and the moment during “Thunder Road” when Bruce let the audience sing “You ain’t a beauty, but hey, you’re all right” to him.
Finally, there was the crowd, which I can’t possibly forget to mention. Because Bruce was right — he couldn’t have built that house by himself. It took the combined energy of every single person in that arena to build the experience that that concert was. At various points during the night, I just looked around me — looked at the thousands of people of literally all ages, from 8-year-olds singing along to every word with their parents to young adults around my age to people Springsteen’s age and beyond — and I saw them all singing and dancing and waving their arms and having the time of their lives. There was no pushing, no anger, no mockery — everyone I encountered was happy and polite. We were all there, having the same experience, feeling that same glorious energy, and at that moment everything was ok in the world.
There’s a moment — my favorite moment of any concert — when an artist inserts an unexpected pause in a song, and the audience, so used to the studio recording, continues to sing the words before the artist gets a chance to. This happened for the first time during “Spirit in the Night,” and there is nothing quite as awesome as thousands of people simultaneously singing the words “gypsy angel row.” Everyone knew the words, and everyone, for that single moment, was thinking the exact same thing, and inspired to say the exact same thing, even without the band‘s prompting. The power of that collective consciousness was almost overwhelming.
I’d be lying if I said the Springsteen show changed my life. The wave of inspiration and fervent urge to create and go after my dreams dissipated somewhere on the south side of New Jersey Turnpike as I struggled to stay awake for the ride home. But the feeling still surfaces, periodically, whenever a song comes up on my iPod or I remember a particularly excellent moment from that night, and I have a feeling that the house that Bruce and I built will shelter me for quite some time.
The Name Game
I have a problem. A uniquely nerdy problem.
I can’t seem to stop naming pets and inanimate objects after my favorite characters.
When I was a kid, my naming conventions for pets were normal enough. I had two parakeets named Banana and Icicle — Banana was yellow and green, and Icicle blue and white. When they died, we got another parakeet, which I named Zelda, after my invisible friend (invisible twin sister, to be precise) from childhood. To this day I don’t know where that name came from, and I’m not sure the bird appreciated it — soon enough, as the flesh over “her” beak turned from purple to a clear blue, we realized that Zelda was not as feminine as we’d been led to believe. But the fact remained that the names were nice, normal pet names.
The last normally-named pet I had was a betta fish I got in 9th grade; its name was Aquarius. When he died, sometime during my sophomore year of high school, it was like a switch got thrown: suddenly, all of my future pets would have names related to my geeky obsession of the moment. Jumping right into the deep end of nerdiness, I named my next betta fish Mark Roger Caplan-Pascal, after my two favorite characters from the musical RENT and my two favorite actors (Matt Caplan and Adam Pascal) who’d played those roles. And believe me, I never abbreviated the name. Every day I’d come home, sprinkle some food into the bowl, and cheerfully greet him with, “Hello, Mark Roger Caplan-Pascal!”
My next betta fish was Captain Jack Kelly, a combination of the names of my two favorite “Jack” characters: Pirates of the Caribbean‘s Captain Jack Sparrow, and Jack Kelly from Newsies. After that, I had Javid, an amalgamation of Newsies‘ Jack and David. By the time he died, I was in college and making my way into comic book fandom, so my next fish were, predictably, a blue male and a red female that I named Scott and Jean — and later a runty yellow male named Logan. (Nowadays, I’m up to my seventh geeky betta fish: the hardy red-white-and-blue Captain Amerifish.)
It was around the time of the Scott and Jean fish that I began to notice my pets unconsciously taking on the characteristics of their namesakes. Be it cosmic coincidence or willful interpretation, I couldn’t help attributing their behavior to their fictional counterparts. Captain Jack Kelly, for instance, hadn’t so much died as simply up and vanished from his tank, just like his escape-artist namesakes. (I still suspect my parents actually found him dead and flushed him, but they refuse to admit that to this day.) Then there was Jean, who, appropriately enough, died before Scott in spectacular fashion (I’m still waiting for her return from the cocoon I assume she must be forming), and Logan, who outlived them both. On particularly boring college afternoons, I liked to gaze at my Scott and Logan fish and imagine the inevitable fight to the death that would result if they were to mix in the same tank (male bettas attack each other automatically, but I liked to think their namesakes’ rivalry would have made the battle even worse).
This habit of geeky naming and personality attribution was only heightened when I began to follow nerd conventions and name my personal tech. After a non-geeky first computer named Magellan had burned out its hard drive within two months of purchase (a word to the wise: don’t name computers after explorers who were victims of mutiny), I christened my new computer Captain America, and he continued to function beautifully for several years despite the advancement of his chronological age. My red external hard drive I decided to name Iron Man (and he occasionally refused to work properly with Cap, though they usually got along splendidly), and I named my maroon phone Dark Phoenix and my second iPod Marvel Girl (neither has attacked me yet, but I sometimes worry about letting Dark Phoenix reach its signal into space). None of this compared to the fate of my first iPod, though. Since it was silver, I’d decided to call it Bucky, reasoning that if it ever died, I’d know it wasn’t really gone — it was just brainwashed and turned into an assassin for a foreign government! Unbelievably, Bucky wound up experiencing an unfortunate washing machine incident, but though I believed he’d been drowned, he actually recovered a few days later — after I’d already bought his replacement. The only way the story could be more perfect is if he’d reprogrammed himself in Russian.
All this brings me to the past week, when I bought three new important things: a computer, and two gerbils. The computer I named Pixie, after a minor X-Men character with butterfly wings and a crush on Cyclops (my personal Mary Sue if ever there was one). The computer is pink and black, like the character’s hair, and as long as it doesn’t get transported into Limbo and get part of its soul removed, it should be ok.
More worrying are my gerbils, who I named Jean and Wanda. Jean is a lovely tan color; Wanda is a nice black and white. And while I named them that largely because of the friendship Jeff Parker (and Colleen Coover!) gave them in X-Men: First Class, I haven’t gotten a solid feel for their personalities yet. I can’t help but wonder what will happen if they decide to take their cues from the Dark Phoenix Saga, or the House of M.
So if my gerbils decide to eat the sun or tamper with genetics on a worldwide scale… well, I apologize in advance.
(So, what are your geeky pet or tech names? I know I’m not alone. Feel free to share in the comments!)
“It starts with the eyes”: The Homoeroticism of Fast and Furious
Here’s a confession: I love the Fast and the Furious franchise.
Actually, no, that’s not entirely true. I’ve never seen 2 Fast 2 Furious (text message spelling in titles is a pretty big turnoff for my inner grammarian), and, as it lacks even my most shallow reason for loving the movies (Paul Walker’s pretty, pretty face), I don’t think I’ll ever bother to see Tokyo Drift. But I love the first movie, and, after two viewings, I’ve decided I love the most recent movie, too. Don’t get me wrong — they’re not art. The acting is bad and the scripts are worse. But I love the stupid car chases, I love the insanely attractive cast, I love the big dumb fun of it all, and I love the themes of betrayal and loyalty, two of my favorite fictional tropes, that run throughout.
And most of all, I love that the movies are really, really gay.
At the core of every good joke is a grain of truth, and there’s a reason Saturday Night Live’s The Fast and the Bi-Curious sketch has received so much internet popularity. There’s just something inherently homoerotic about guys getting sweaty together in garages and racing each other through the streets in giant fuel-injected phallic metaphors.
But that’s the easy interpretation — the SNL interpretation, the joke interpretation. And while I enjoy that aspect of the film as much as the next person, what I really love about the films is the undeniable emotional core. The Fast and the Furious — and, to an even greater extent, the new Fast and Furious — is a love story between Brian O’Conner (Paul Walker) and Dominic Toretto (Vin Diesel).
(Extensive spoilers for the recent film below.)
Books and Reading Meme
I’ve seen this meme floating around (most recently at my good friend Caroline’s new blog), and, in the interest of sharing more about myself with my readers, as well as creating more content for this blog, I figured I’d fill it out myself.
1. What author do you own the most books by?
To get this out of the way, first and foremost: I read a lot of children’s and YA fiction. My favorites from childhood are still some of my favorites to this day. I went to Princeton, I majored in English, I’ve read and enjoyed the grown-up classics. But this list is liable to include literature meant for readers under the age of 15.
So the answer to this first question is K.A. Applegate, author of the Animorphs series. I own every book, and between the regular series and all the specials, that’s over 60.
2. What book do you own the most copies of?
I… don’t buy multiple copies of books? I honestly can’t think of a single book I own multiple copies of, and if I do, it’s not on purpose.
Oh, wait, I own two copies of The Devil in Vienna, because my copy was falling apart and my library was selling its copy. So, that.
3. What fictional character are you secretly in love with?
Secretly? I pretty openly confess to all of my fictional crushes. I mean, I don’t think there’s a straight woman alive who isn’t in love with Mr. Darcy, right?
4. What book have you read more than any other?
Oh, this is tough. I’m not a big re-reader. Probably The Devil in Vienna, a fictionalized Holocaust memoir for young adults, told in the letters and diary entries of two friends (one Jewish, one the daughter of a Nazi official) torn apart by the war.
5. What was your favorite book when you were ten years old?
I really can’t remember. Roald Dahl’s The Magic Finger, perhaps? If we go to an even younger age, my favorite book was Mrs. Peloki’s Class Play, a picture book about a 3rd grade class putting on a production of Cinderella.
6. What is the worst book you’ve read in the past year?
Worst? I don’t think I’ve read any books that were bad. I’ve read books I didn’t enjoy — The Faerie Queene, for instance — but I’m not calling Edmund Spenser’s hugely influential romantic poem bad.
I did find myself seriously underwhelmed by David Lubar’s Dunk, my students’ summer reading assignment that I read over the summer. It was a YA book about a New Jersey kid’s summer on the boardwalk and desire to be the clown in the dunk tank, which should have been right up my alley, but it was full of cheap characterization shortcuts and the ending was far too neat for the conflicts set up. Plus, I seriously disagreed with its overall belief that making fun of people is in any way empowering or appropriate.
7. What is the best book you’ve read in the past year?
That is HARD. I’ll cheat and say that the combination of Tom Perrotta’s Bad Haircut and Jhumpa Lahiri’s Interpreter of Maladies inspired me to start writing a book of interconnected short stories, because those (very different) books showed me just how well such a thing can be done.
That said, I’m in the middle of The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay right now, so my answer could change in a few weeks.
8. If you could tell everyone reading this to read one book, what would it be?
I’m not sure I could universally recommend any one book to everyone — there are some people who are bound to hate whatever I choose, based on probability alone.
However, I will say that The Sun Also Rises is worth a shot for pretty much anyone. If you already like Hemingway, you’ll love this, and if you hate Hemingway (as I did before reading this novel), you’ll be very pleasantly surprised. It’s pretty much my favorite book — in the top 5, at least — and I never would have anticipated that.
9. What is the most difficult book you’ve ever read?
I’m not sure I’m a good judge of that. I’m pretty confident I could read any book put before me, and if I struggled it would be due more to disinterest than difficulty. I suppose I had some difficulty with the language in The Faerie Queene, and it was pretty difficult to follow the bizarre structure of Pale Fire, but that’s the closest I can think of.
10. Do you prefer the French or the Russians?
I… honestly don’t think I’ve ever read anything by either. I read Brits and Americans almost exclusively, because I find that translated work almost never works for me. No matter how competent the translator is, I feel like something’s missing.
11. Shakespeare, Milton or Chaucer?
Shakespeare! I appreciate Milton’s skill, but I can’t honestly say I was engaged by Paradise Lost, and Chaucer is fun in classes but not something I’m going to pick up for pleasure reading. However, I would read the complete works of any of those three before I would ever read another word of Spenser.
12. Austen or Eliot?
I’ve never read Eliot, and I love Austen to death, and this is therefore the easiest question on this whole meme.
13. What is the biggest or most embarrassing gap in your reading?
I have… some pretty huge gaps for someone with an Ivy League degree in this stuff. Like, poetry, in general, which I’ve never been particularly into. And the aforementioned French and Russians.
14. What is your favorite novel?
I’ve already mentioned both my nostalgic favorite, The Devil in Vienna, and my other favorite, The Sun Also Rises, so I’ll take this opportunity to give love to Great Expectations. I <3 Dickens.
15. Play?
Oh, that’s tough. Othello is my favorite Shakespeare, probably, though Hamlet and Much Ado About Nothing come close. And as far as non-Shakespeare plays go, I recently read and fell in love with Cat on a Hot Tin Roof, and I absolutely adore The Crucible, so… too tough to call, really.
16. Poem?
I really don’t think I have one, since I’m not very interested in poetry. My favorite poetry tends to be of the witty and rhyming sort — limericks and such, Dorothy Parker, etc.
17. Essay?
I must have one. I know I must. But I’ll be damned if I can think of it right now.
18. Short Story?
Ack! Don’t make me choose. Short stories may be my favorite fictional medium. I could literally choose any of the stories in Bad Haircut or Interpreter of Maladies; I could choose all of Poe and O. Henry’s and Francesca Lia Block’s short form work; I could choose any number of fairy tale adaptations. Honestly, nothing stands out as an absolute best, and it would be a slight against all of my other favorites to choose one.
19. Non Fiction
I really don’t tend to read a lot of non-memoir nonfiction for pleasure, and much of what I read for school I had to skim because of time constraints. That said, the bits of Taylor Branch’s Parting the Waters: America During the King Years that I read in a 1950s class were beautifully written and extremely informative about the Civil Rights Movement, and I eventually plan to read the whole thing. I’ve also really liked the bits of Randy Shilts’ And the Band Played On that I’ve read.
20. Graphic Novel?
I’m going to take this as “favorite book best known as a graphic novel,” because I read way too many superhero comics to choose between them. So I’ll go with Maus, which was technically my first graphic novel, and is utterly brilliant.
21. Science Fiction?
Can the Animorphs series as a whole count? If it can’t, I’ll say The Andalite Chronicles, by far the best special novel in the series.
22. Who is your favorite writer?
You know, I thought about this for awhile, and though there are authors I love — Shakespeare, Austen, Dickens, Tom Perrotta — the only author whose books I’ve read in a huge quantity that were not part of a series and that never once displeased me… is Roald Dahl. The man could do no wrong when it came to children’s fiction. (Runner up goes to Francesca Lia Block, whose prose shouldn’t work and yet always, always does.)
23. Who is the most overrated writer alive today?
If I don’t like (or don’t think I’ll like) an author, I don’t read them, so I’m not really capable of judging what authors might be overrated.
24. What are you reading right now?
As mentioned before, The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. I’m amazed I haven’t read it before, as it contains pretty much all of my favorite literary topics: comic books, the Holocaust, and homosexuality. I’m about 100 pages in and adoring it so far, so we’ll see how it goes.
25. Best Memoir?
I’ve read a lot of Holocaust memoirs, and I’m not sure I could choose between them. So I’ll go in a different direction and say Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Wait Till Next Year, a wonderful story about childhood and baseball in the 1950s.
26. Best History?
Let’s just say Parting the Waters again, though if historical fiction counts I could probably come back with a pretty long list, as I spent most of my childhood reading that.
27. Best Mystery or Noir?
Very much not my genre. I… am not sure I could even name, off the top of my head, a mystery or noir story I’ve read, besides Farewell, My Lovely (which I disliked). Sorry!
The Toilet Business
It seems I overestimated the amount I’d have to say on this blog. The job hunt has been stressful, and while I’ve still been chugging away over at Fantastic Fangirls, working up the energy to write posts on other topics has been difficult.
However, I hope that will change soon, because I am finally — at least for 8 weeks — employed, and I’ve just completed the first 9-5 work week of my life.
It isn’t thrilling work. It’s boring temp data entry, the rite of passage of young professionals everywhere. I stare at numbers all day long and plug them into a spreadsheet. But my coworkers are nice, the office is clean and has unlimited free tea and isn’t too far away, and I’m getting paid, which is more than I’ve been able to say since… well, since the summer.
Also, it involves toilets.
Here’s the thing: my whole family is in the toilet business. My father, who’s always dreamed of becoming a plumber (yes, seriously) finally became a pipefitter recently, and he does all kinds of plumbing maintenance for his corporation. My mother, a bookkeeper, works for a company that outfits public bathrooms with stall partitions, toilet paper holders, and other paraphernalia. And my brother works for a company that, while not explicitly toilet-related, is affiliated with the company for which I now work: a national manufacturer of toilets, sinks, and other plumbing equipment.
It’s easy to laugh at. I mean, my family spends every day quite literally dealing with other people’s shit. But at the same time, it fills me with a bit of pride. Because each of us, in our own way, is working on something important — something absolutely necessary for the comfort of human beings (at least in first world countries). My ultimate goal, as most people know, is to work in publishing, or, perhaps, to go to grad school and become an academic in the field of media and cultural studies. In my wildest dreams, I hope to someday publish a book. But I know that, no matter what I accomplish in those fields, it won’t benefit nearly as many people, in nearly as fundamental a way, as my work indexing toilet parts for my current employer.
And that? Is pretty damn cool.
Driving Past Billy’s House
As a naturally anecdotal person, I’m going to start this blog with a story.
When I was in Kindergarten, I rode the bus to school. I actually lived fairly close to all the schools in my town, and by 7th grade I was no longer given the courtesy of a bus; instead, my mom was forced to drive me to and from school each day to prevent me from having to walk through a tangled forest or along busy, sidewalk-bare streets, the only two options for walkers. But back in Kindergarten, I still had a bus, and it was on that big, yellow, diesel-fueled monstrosity that I traveled to school each day.
Of course, we didn’t drive straight to school. There were several other bus stops to hit after mine, all around this little corner of my suburban New Jersey town. To my 5-year-old mind, the trip seemed to take forever–certainly far longer than my ears could stand the incessant repetitions of “Ice, Ice, Baby” and “U Can’t Touch This,” the contents of the only two cassettes the fourth graders brought each morning for the bus driver to play. But eventually, we’d hit the last stop on the route, way out at the edge of town: the front lawn of a boy named Billy, who once ripped my homework in half and consequently earned my hatred in perpetuity. After Billy’s house, the bus would do a k-turn in the dirt-packed parking lot of the sprawling industrial wasteland across the street, and we’d be off, full speed ahead, to my elementary school.
I have, rather notoriously, no sense of direction. My mind contains no functional mental map, and while I can follow some directions from memory after traveling them many times, I have no concept of how those discrete trips might provide me with the raw material for traveling to other, exotic destinations. (The GPS my parents finally gave me this Christmas is, perhaps, the best gift I’ve ever received.) Unsurprisingly, my sense of direction was no better when I was 5 years old, and not even driving anywhere on my own power. So it didn’t even occur to me, until years later, that Billy’s house, which had seemed so far away in those early bus years, was actually about five minutes away from my own house.
This fall, I spent a whole semester teaching 6th grade English at a middle school in a nearby town. Each day, I woke up at 5:30 (or, more frequently than I like to remember, 4:30, to finish work I couldn’t finish the night before), and I was out of my house by ten to seven. As the sun began to peek out from beneath the horizon, I drove down the street toward work, and the first significant landmark I passed–the first thing I noticed, as I focused my bleary eyes on the road ahead–was Billy’s house. And every day, as I would approach that house, some part of me, the five-year-old buried inside, would feel strange. Would feel like I shouldn’t be doing this; like I should, instead, be making a k-turn in that dusty parking lot and heading back in the opposite direction. Billy’s house was a boundary, the thin, soapy wall of the bubble of my childhood, and to drive to my first real adult job, I had to pop that bubble every single day.
In many ways, my whole life has been about metaphorically “driving past Billy’s house.” My natural resistance to change has meant that there are very few new things in my life that I’ve been immediately comfortable with. I was a naïve goody two-shoes who never disobeyed my parents until my friends in sixth grade, disregarding my reluctance, taught me how to curse. I was convinced, until age 10, that the only music that existed was country, oldies, and classic rock, because my parents’ music was all I’d ever heard, and when the local country station went off the air I was ready to stage a protest. (Nowadays, I mostly listen to pop, showtunes, and singer-songwriter-type stuff, but Garth Brooks and Bruce Springsteen make up quite a bit of my iTunes library.) I have hated every single interest I’ve ever had–from the Animorphs books I read as a kid to the Hanson music I still proudly enjoy to the comics that currently consume my life–before I became interested in them. Every step I’ve taken in my life has been a case of reevaluating my opinions and expectations, of pushing past the rigid boundaries I always thought I had and realizing that they were little more than soap bubbles after all. Every moment of my life, every new experience, has been about pushing farther, about discovering new worlds, and new parts of myself, that I never imagined. Every day of my life has been about driving past Billy’s house.
And now, I find myself at a crossroads. As a young adult about to enter the workforce in earnest (in a terrible economy, no less), I’m about to make a series of decisions that will each involve the breaking of a new boundary, the trying of something new. I will be frequently “trampling through the brush,” as the title of this blog says–a quote from a statement I invented for myself back in high school: “When two roads diverge in a wood, I often find it’s best to stray from both and instead trample through the brush.” I would be lying if I said I wasn’t terrified of the prospect. But I recognize this new world of opportunities for what it is, and I’m willing–cautiously–to meet it head on.
2009 has just begun, and the new year is always a time for renewal and fresh starts. And so I’ve started this blog. It doesn’t have a central purpose–not like Fantastic Fangirls, the comics blog I run with three of my good friends. This blog is likely to be meandering, with topics ranging from my current life to past reminiscences to commentary on books, music, movies, politics, Broadway, or anything else that comes to mind. I won’t be surprised, or offended, if no one at all reads this. But as I begin my journey into the so-called “real world,” driving past Billy’s house after Billy’s house after Billy’s house, I think it’s worth recording my thoughts, as I have them, to create a document of who I am, and who I’m about to become.
I hope some of you will join me on the journey. Even if, in the end, it only turns out to be 5 minutes long.
Jennifer Smith
throughthebrush@gmail.com
