My sister learns many things at school. The heading of this post was one of the unfortunate high school mottoes she eagerly whispered into my ear, giggling while she repeated the nonsense of some high school boy. She's excited about school. Having never been excited about school myself, I obviously conclude that she isn't actually enrolled in a school. By accident, she must have been enrolled in some kind of simulated daycare facility, where friends can get together and spend afternoons sympathizing with each other about "that place called home" and the hell they're living. In high school, I sympathized with Dicken's "Smike" and Hugo's "Cosette". We had solidarity in suffering. Or so I thought.
However, sleeping in a cold room on a hard bed isn't as glamorous as it once seemed. Neither is working for a cruel and stubborn man. I'm missing aspects of the high school days, where the hardest part of the day was waking up in the morning. I rarely appreciate things until they're gone. It's human nature, so I'm told.
The most difficult part of preparing a blog post is allowing it to remain. It's such a temptation to delete these Frankenstein essays. However, I've decided to keep these blogposts. For another six months, at least. To see what happens. I want to develop.
Today, I read something interesting: a clip from a book called "Heartbreak". Apparently, it was given horrible reviews and was made up of literary brilliance applied to disgusting subjects. One line, which infuriated many people, went as follows:
"Here she is at her kitchen table, fingering a jigsaw of thalidomide ginger,
thinking about the arthritis in her hands."
"Thalidomide ginger?" they gasped in horror. "The stumpy limbs of deformed children? A root of ginger is perceived in this dark and ghastly way? Who writes these things?"
But I thought it was a clever conceit, as rhetoricians say.
It snowed today. I don't like snow, because it is wet, it is cold, and my parents greatly restrict my driving privileges. However, if it keeps me from driving Joseph out to Banks tomorrow, I'll thank each and every snowflake.
Joan and I filmed a video for her class tonight. It's about John Steinbeck. I'm afraid I took the script and re-interpreted it quite a bit. It's all pretty tame until the introduction of Steinbeck's third wife. The Dresden Dolls and German impressionism come together to form this love-child, this wife.
I'm standing in the living room, cheeks painted brightly and lips tinted bright red. My mouth is puckered into an 'O' and my hair sticks out on both sides of my head. Behind me stands my sister, who plays Steinbeck's step-daughter, Waverly. You can't see her from the vantage point of the camera. The scene begins, and the narrator introduces us. I raise my arms and she does the same, at alternating angles, so we look like a Hindu goddess without a trunk. I bow to the left, and she to the right, emitting a high-pitched, "Oh!" simultaneously. The scene is...fantastic in its ridiculousness.
For another scene, Joan's written a script for the narrator. He says, "In the 1960's, Steinbeck admitted to his wife that he was ready to bow out and give up." In this scene, Joan, dressed as Steinbeck, and I, as his wife, are seated on a chest. Steinbeck looks at Elaine and says, "I am ready to bow out and give up." I face the camera, and say, "Oh!"
Brilliance.
