Goodbye, Love

Before we begin, I would like everyone to skip ahead to 3:31 in this video and listen to it as you read this post. Anyone with a snarky comment about Rent or how my love for a tree in no way resembles the love of a musician for his girlfriend who's dying of AIDS will be summarily executed.

When I was little I used to climb the giant fir tree outside my bedroom window. I would sit in its branches and talk to the squirrels. I would wake up in the morning to the birds calling out for each other from its branches. One spring I watched a robin's nest fill with tiny turquoise eggs. I loved this tree.

My parents have been talking for a while about how the tree's roots have begun to buckle the concrete floor in the basement and cause minor damage to the drain field. They decided that this winter, perish the thought, they would have the tree removed along with two others near our front door. Being the stubborn ass I am, I refused to acknowledge their plans. My mom would suggest that I take pictures before the tree came down and I would respond with "I know not of what you speak." I was content to deny reality for years to come, but last night, in front of the fire, my mother told me that whether I liked it or not the tree would be coming down. Tomorrow.

Well, today is tomorrow. I lost count of the number of times I woke up last night feeling sick to my stomach and fighting back tears. The tree people showed up at 8:00 this morning and, being too upset to watch the slow death of my childhood, I fled to town to do errands. This tree was full-grown when our house was built over 100 years ago. It had more right to be there than we did. There was no way I was going to watch it come down.

I was in the bookstore reading when my dad called to say the tree was gone and that I could come home. I hung up, pretended like I wasn't crying already, and drove back to my house. I'd like to say that having lived nearly 25 years on this planet has toughened my emotions to those of at least a six-year-old. I'd like to say that when I saw the pile of sawed rounds and the mountain of sawdust that had been, only four hours earlier, my favorite tree, I nodded and said to myself, "Okay." I would love to say that. Instead, I burst into tears. It was like a family member had died, the way I was convulsing and choking on my sobs in such a dramatic fashion. If I had been someone observing the scene I would have rolled my eyes and thought, "Oh get over yourself." But the truth is, it was truly devastating. It still is. The light shines into my room differently now--a blast of brightness that makes me feel exposed and intruded upon, like I'm on display. It was such a beautiful tree. I feel like a monster for letting it be toppled.

 

If anyone goes for my beloved Chinese chestnut tree I will hurl myself into the path of the chainsaw.

These giants came down too, but I was okay with that. I actually think it looks better without them.

Goodbye, love.

Aaaaand Again

We're going to have several trees in our yard taken down this winter and the other day the arborist showed up to inspect them. He knocked on the door and when I went to answer he asked, in a tone very close to condescension, "Is your mom or dad home?"

I AM TWENTY-FOUR F***ING YEARS OLD. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU PEOPLE?

Me Encanta Duolingo!

My friend Julia recently told me about this website called Duolingo that helps you learn Spanish for free. It's excellent for me, particularly because I can't seem to motivate myself to do anything that cannot be accessed on the computer. The only problem is that you have to go through the lessons section by section, so even though I've known the present tense since I was thirteen I still have to translate sentences like "Quiero nueve fresas" before I can move on to the more "complicated" stuff like "El perro comio su comida" or--and I kid you not--"Esos elefantes no tienen ojos." Which is super creepy.

I took the liberty of snapping screen shots of some of the more...colorful questions. You're welcome.

God, why does this have to be so hard?

If only I had some kind of clue...

If you are a living creature who has gotten to this level of Duolingo and you truly think it's not #1, I weep for you.

It's clearly #3.

Wait, "chicken" isn't Spanish for "chicken"? (In my defense, I've been doing this for three hours. I don't think I even remember how to dress myself.)

A Year Later

It has been almost eleven months since my high school English teacher, Prudence Hockley, was beaten to death by her boyfriend.

It's not fine, but most of the time I am. I wake up in the morning and eat my breakfast and drink my tea and play my guitar and it's possible, with my nose buried in the pages of a poetry book, for me to forget that I belong to a world in which extraordinary people die.

Then I look at Hockley's picture, as I have every day for nearly a year, and I can't comprehend how there's any good left in this universe without her. I don't want to be part of a world in which a woman as physically and mentally strong as Prudence Hockley, a woman who took no nonsense from anyone, was rendered a victim by a man who was supposed to love her.

I wish I could be one of those people whose anger at being wronged fades with time like a long, slow exhale, and while their hurt never disappears they find it in themselves to forgive. But every time I look at Hockley's picture I am filled with rage and paralyzing sadness. I had a conversation recently with a friend who said he doubted I had it in me to hate anyone. Though I agreed, it was wishful thinking. It seems impossible that I will ever stop hating Johnnie Lee Wiggins for murdering the best teacher I ever had, and one of the most important people in my life. I see her smile and imagine her hopping onto a desk in her four-inch heels to shout Lady Macbeth's "damned spot" soliloquy into the ceiling and the rush of pain is enough, even a year after her death, to collapse me.

I've always shrugged away compliments, but Hockley was the only person who could tell me my ideas were valid and my mind and soul beautiful who I ever believed. When she called me "darling heart" I felt truly valuable. She was proud of me and I can't recall a single day of class during which she did not say so. Even the first day of school when my classmates and I filed into her room a horde of strangers, her first words to us were, "I don't know you but I love you already." It was as if seven seconds in her presence was all it took to make us hers. And it was. And we were. We are.

I think of you every day, Hockley, and I love you with a strength that renews itself each night. I promise to work for the rest of my life to prove myself worthy of the love you gave me and the faith you had in my mind and my heart.

I love you.

How I Carry On

I dwelt in darkness today. Last night my boys' 2-1 win over the LA Galaxy was not enough to bail them out of the 3-0 hole they dug themselves into last weekend, and they fell 4-2 on aggregate in the Western Conference Finals. The rage I feel toward David Beckham, Mike Magee, Robbie Keane, Landon Donovan (I don't care that he didn't even play), and the embarrassingly incompetent assistant ref who called EJ's first goal offsides when replays show he clearly wasn't, is absolutely indescribable. My soul is shattered. After a disjointed night during which I replayed Johannson's handball in the box over and over again, I awoke, depressed, reciting "Yet, or email"--a nonsensical clue to some crossword puzzle I'd invented in my sleep.

I staggered around today in a state of zombie-like heartbreak. Lord knows what people thought of me as I wept quietly into my peppermint hot chocolate at the bookstore cafe. Only time (and career-ending injuries to the Galaxy players) will heal this pain, but these videos, courtesy of the Wait Wait blog, certainly help:

From now on I'm only saying my name rhythmically, with a head flick and an eyebrow raise.

I know, I know. This is ridiculously adorable. Try to control your emotions.

There's no arguing with her logic: it does make some damn good toast.

For those who thought it couldn't get any cuter than a snoring hummingbird, it just did.

 

This makes me feel so uncomfortable for the people having real conversations...but it's kind of genius.

This isn't a video (clearly), but boy howdy is it glorious. (Case, this has your name written all over it!)

This is Delightful

This was sent to my mom this morning by a friend:

 

QI

My friend Sara has recently gotten me hooked on a British game show called QI, hosted by my favorite person in the entire world, Stephen Fry. The premise of the show is this: Stephen asks random, seemingly unknowable questions to a group of four panelists composed mostly of comedians but sometimes a doctor or professor with an impressively acute sense of humor. The panelists banter and snark and earn nonsensical points for answering questions to which no human being on earth should know the answer, like when Daniel Radcliffe launched into a five-minute explanation of magic in ancient Egypt after he was asked the question "What is the oldest trick in the book?"

Here is a smattering of what I have learned so far:

1. Sharks are the only vertebrate without a backbone.
2. The "present" officially began on Sunday, January 1, 1950.
3. A dormouse is not a mouse. (Nor is it, if you were curious, a door.)
4. There were over 7,000 heads of lettuce on the Titanic when it sank.
5. Louis VII's bad haircut started the Hundred Years' War.
6. Iceland has more Nobel Prize winners per capita than any other country on Earth: 1. (The population is 320,000.)
7. The Eskimo Olympics include a game in which two players each hook a looped end of a string onto their ears and pull.
8. Penguins are too light to set off land mines.
9. Queen Victoria had her ice imported from Boston.
10. When Pope Innocent III sentenced every person in the Netherlands to death for heresy, the Duke of Alba ordered 7,000 pairs of ice skates so that when the Spanish came to invade in the dead of winter, the Dutch could skate out along the canals and fight back.
11. Very rarely are igloos actually made out of ice. They're usually made from caribou hide.
12. Back when Coney Island was the most popular entertainment venue in the world, its longest running attraction was babies in incubators. At that time, there were no incubators in hospitals.
13. In Manhattan, where space was at a premium, Eleanor Roosevelt kept her baby in a cage that hung out her window.
14. Louise Brown, the first test tube baby, was actually created in a petri dish.
15. Forty is the only number in the English language whose letters, when written out, are in alphabetical order.
16. "Gymnasium" is Greek for "place to be naked."
17. In the early Olympic Games, medals were awarded for poetry composition. (This fact delights me--a person who will never, as hard as she tries, demonstrate the athletic fitness of a nine-year-old Chinese gymnast, but who can analyze the shit out of a poem written in iambic pentameter.)

Is this not fascinating? Go, get thee to YouTube!

Damn Right, Playoff Win!

This video makes me cry. I just can't help it. I love my boys!

I know, I know. Get a life.

(But Zach Scott, put some pants on. And Gspurning, take your shirt off.)

Also, I was going to post a post-game interview with our Austrian goalie, Michael Gspurning, but I can't find it. He's the most adorable person ever. When congratulated by the interviewer, Gspurning's response was: "The game from us was actually not so good...but who cares?" I. Love. Him.

Just Kidding

You know how much I've gushed about my cat being the most adorable creature on the planet?

 

Yeah... 

I take that back.