Poetry Corner Monday

Since, on a Quiet Night

Dylan Thomas

Since, on a quiet night, I heard them talk
Who have no voices but the winds'
Of all the mystery there is in life
And all the mastery there is in death,
I have not lain an hour asleep
But troubled by their curious speech
Stealing so softly into the ears.
One says: There was a woman with no friend,
And, standing over the sea, she'd cry
Her loneliness across the empty waves
Time after time.
And every voice:
Oblivion is as loverless;
Oblivion is as loverless.
And then again: There was a child
Upon the earth who knew no joy,
For there was no light in his eyes,
And there was no light in his soul.
Oblivion is as blind.
Oblivion is as blind,
I hear them say out of the darkness
Who have no talk but that of death.

Jimmy Kimmel's Coachella Prank

I heard this clip on a podcast the other day and found it so entertaining that I thought I'd share it with all two of you. You're welcome.

Miniature Melbourne

I just received a link to this video from my dear friend Meaghin (thanks, Meaghin!), whom I met while studying in Australia. In less than five minutes, this time-lapse video manages to capture every emotion I experienced during my year abroad. It reminds me that I will always belong to theYarra River, the ghost gums in Royal Park, the clocks above the train station steps. I miss them all so much.

An Encounter at the Fruit Market

I was waiting in line at the checkout stand at the fruit market yesterday when a woman in her mid-forties came up behind me. The way our market works is this: if you have a cart, you push it behind the counter where the cashier stands and he or she unloads it from there. I just had a basket, but the lady behind me had a cart, which she pushed right up next to the cashier as if it were her turn. When the cashier finished with the couple in front of me, she reached over to start unloading this lady's cart; it was, after all, right next to her. Before I had a chance to say anything the woman behind me said, "This girl's next" and pointed to me. "Oh," the cashier said, puzzled, and reached for my basket. "Isn't the sunshine so nice?" she asked as she weighed my produce. I had barely opened my mouth to answer when I heard the woman behind me say, "Tell me about it! It's gorgeous!" It was then that I noticed that the woman was not standing the considerate grocery-store-etiquette distance behind me--she was right next to me. As in, how closely the couple in front of me had been standing. And they had been holding hands.

I took a step to my right. The cashier reached for my bag--a Sounders tote that I take everywhere in the hope that someone will strike up a soccer conversation with me--and said, "Cool bag!" "Thanks!" I answered. "Did you hear about the four-match pack?" she asked. (The team is running a discount on tickets for four home games against all our biggest rivals.) "Yeah," I answered, "I'll think about it if we start winning some." "Oh my gosh," came a voice from beside me. "I know." I turned to my left to see that the woman had inched even closer to me. And, I thought, quickly scanning her appearance, no way in hell has she ever even seen a soccer game.

I took another step to my right, which I realized as soon as it happened that I was just extended another invitation to snuggle. I came to see moments later when I handed the cashier my debit card that I had another problem: my new best friend was standing directly in front of the PIN pad. "Um," I started, "excuse me?" I tried to sneak my way past her, but the lady did not budge. She didn't even acknowledge that she was in my way, or really that I was even present in the transaction at all. By the time the cashier handed me my receipt, I had been elbowed a good three feet from one end of the counter to the other. "Thanks," I mumbled, making sure to make eye contact with only the cashier. I grabbed my bag and walked off to my car, utterly perplexed.

Poetry Corner Monday

The Wood-Pile

Robert Frost

Out walking in the frozen swamp one gray day,
I paused and said, "I will turn back from here.
No, I will go farther--and we shall see."
The hard snow held me, save where now and then
One foot went through. The view was all in lines
Straight up and down of tall slim trees
Too much alike to mark or name a place by
So as to say for certain I was here
Or somewhere else: I was just far from home.
A small bird flew before me. He was careful
To put a tree between us when he lighted,
And say no word to tell me who he was
Who was so foolish as to think what he thought.
He thought that I was after him for a feather--
The white one in his tail; like the one who takes
Everything said as personal to himself.
One flight out sideways would have undeceived him.
And then there was a pile of wood for which
I forgot him and let his little fear
Carry him off the way I might have gone,
Without so much as wishing him good-night.
He went behind it to make his last stand.
It was a cord of maple, cut and split
And piled--and measured, four by four by eight.
And not another like it could I see.
No runner tracks in this year's snow looped near it.
And it was older sure than this year's cutting,
Or even last year's or the year's before.
The wood was gray and the bark warping off it
And the pile somewhat sunken. Clematis
Had wound strings round and round it like a bundle.
What held it though on one side was a tree
Still growing, and on one a stake and prop,
These latter about to fall. I thought that only
Someone who lived in turning to fresh tasks
Could so forget his handiwork on which
He spend himself, the labor of his ax,
And leave it there far from a useful fireplace
To warm the frozen swamp as best it could
With the slow smokeless burning of decay.

No matter how old I am or wherever I may be in the world, never will I find anything that compares to a Pacific Northwest sunset.

P.S. Happy birthday, big brother. I love you.

No Need to Thank Me

I sat down this morning to work on the story I'm writing for my grad school application. As usual, I got distracted--this time by my folder of writing from high school. I came across the document my friends and I created one night at my house while waiting for Whose Line to start. We had been reading Pride & Prejudice in English and had just watched the beginning of the BBC movie version. We were convinced that we could modernize the story and make an Oscar-worthy film version of our very own. On this particular evening, a group of about five of us had piled onto my bed and Jessica was using my wireless keyboard to type all our ideas for the movie onto the computer screen across the room. (We'd set the font size to 72 so we could see it.) Writing down our ideas quickly devolved into Jess frantically typing every single sound that came out of our mouths. I have taken the liberty here of including my favorite lines from that brainstorm session, as well as some from the time we sat down to write our romantic comedy (which is still in the works), called Spaghetti Wednesdays. From these sessions came several quotes that really defined my group of friends in high school, the most notable being "Martha is not a dumbass" (Martha was a character in our movie, not one of our friends), "I am 'yping' like a delicate butterfly," and "Not immoral, dumbass, but with a lack of morals." I'd copy and paste the entire thing, but it's over seven pages and there are only five people on the planet who would appreciate that, me being one of them.

(A note: Because we were using a wireless keyboard, there were quite a few typos that came from poor wireless reception. To make this more readable I have corrected these errors in all the sections but one, and you'll see why. Also, please excuse the inconsistency of font. I don't know what's going on with Blogger.)

And without further ado, here it is!

"Prostitute! Prostitute! Did you know male prostitutes are called johns? They're like kicking at each other why are they called johns? Stop with the rain stick. I know somebody who hired a prostitute to make his gilrfriend jealous b/c she thought he was ditching laura you’re making this all up this is all b.s. her name is sheryl james and she is a photographer SPELLED WRONG it’s spelled C-H YOU ARE ALL LAME! Ha ha ha ha! Okay so what will elizabeth bennet’s name be? Lizzy? Eliza? Beth? Elizabeth? Not Beth not eliza perhaps lizzy perhaps in this time what would it be? There’s a hole in the bucket dear liza dear liza there’s a hole in the bucket I need a pitchfork! Can she do two tasks at once? Well certainly my friends. Just waiting for tom. Who’s Tom? I want one! No one understands me. Is that Tom that was like my soul, Tom Welling?"

Jessica's famous "manly face"

"we could find faults within our own society and make them satirical because little kids are bendy yeah I like that. Michael jackson!!! Eewww!!! Jessica you’re putting words in my mouth. Sounds bad. Jessica is not stupid she is very pretty and inteligent. Hey! I’m not a reliable narrator! Woo! Amoral = no morals. LINDSAY STOP SWEARING & LAURA!!!!!!!!!!!! Lindsay I’m kind of losing my voice."

"ahhh i5t’s not typing the consonants! Ahh!!!! OLIVI SOOL IS BAD It is not typing everything that I type it is theprsidet trying toconfrmu heKEYBOARD! I dn’tknw! No vowes! AwwHHH!! Whoa. Uh-h. oopsies, jes are you typin too hard? I am yping like a delicate butterfly!"

"what did you do to i hate you you are poopy.i was afraid you were going to say mad cow disease. My friends call me whiskers because I'm curious like a cati im serious; I’m listening don’t leave me every party has a pooper that is why we invited youper. hard liquor and whiskers where are you going don’t leave!!"

"do you guys ever get worried when you say like I feel so hot when people think you’re going through menopause? Dude we’re sixteen years old dude I’m getting a curling iron from santa I peeked! 

"Emily, you are like a man pig. Not even a man pig, a pig whore." 

"Julianne you are a thorn in our ass. She should be thirty. Julianne is not amused with our amoral jokes. Not immoral dumbass but with a lack of morals. Not bad morals but I’ll stop. I’m “sorry.” ~Joey Tribbiani. YOU WANNA BETTE? Midler. Keep going. So she somehow sets down the phone. I want a monkey. Shuts off the phone. No there was a really cute one on Conan last night." 

"Jessica sounds like a seal. She is messed up. She is a young mom. She is on the phone with petie’s mom.and she says the prego thing and she laughs like she understands the joke. A cute laugh. Julia’s voice is like mommy can we have spaghetti every night and petie chimes in like for the rest of our freakin'’lives something really cute. I just add in my own expletives when necessary. What did you say to me? Did you ever watch the Family Guy? The mom is really young btw 2o something? Whatever julianne. Hey. I don’t get it (that was Lindsay of course) Oh! F45vrb hu8 that was linz kicking me."

Deploying the Power of Quiet Since 1988

I'm reading this book right now by Susan Cain called Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking. As a person who's often so quiet that people forget I'm even here, this book has been like reading the story of my life. One passage I came across today hits particularly close to home:

"Imagine the following experiment.... A kind woman hands a toy to a toddler, explaining that the child should be very careful because it's one of the woman's favorites. The child solemnly nods assent and begins to play with the toy. Soon afterward, it breaks dramatically in two," (I assume she's talking about the toy, not the child) "having been rigged to do so.
     "The woman looks upset and cries, 'Oh, my!' Then she waits to see what the child does next.
     "Some children, it turns out, feel a lot more guilty about their (supposed) transgression than others. They look away, hug themselves, stammer out confessions, hide their faces. And it's the kids we might call the most sensitive, the most high-reactive, the ones who are likely to be introverts who feel the guiltiest. Being unusually sensitive to all experience, both positive and negative, they seem to feel both the sorrow of the woman whose toy is broken and the anxiety of having done something bad."

My first thought while reading this--right after, Oh my god, it's me!--was Oh my god, this is a thing? I'm not alone? I can't tell you how long I've thought I'm the only person who reacted (and still reacts) this way when I feel I've behaved shamefully. The results of this experiment aren't just me when I was a toddler; they're me now. Except that in addition to looking away and hugging myself and stammering out my confession and hiding my face, I would also probably rock back and forth and cry. But I'm willing to overlook the fact that I am more toddler-like than a toddler, because I'm simply ecstatic that I haven't been, for all these years, more utterly irrational about these things than anyone else on the planet. I have people! Though I've known my whole life that I'm an introvert, reading this book is like being handed a diagnosis after two decades of invasive tests--finally having a letter to pin to my shirt. It's wonderful.

In another chapter Cain wrote about a scientist who conducted experiments to test the reactions of newborns to different levels of stimuli. This scientist discovered that the infants who reacted to bright lights and loud noises by squirming and crying did not, as he'd previously thought, grow up to be extroverts needing to be heard and attended to. In fact, the babies reacted this way because they were overstimulated--easily irritated by overpowering environments. These findings also spoke to me, as I spent the first 24 hours of my life screaming. Who knew that what I was really saying was, "Where's the goddamn dimmer switch? Are you trying to blind me?"

I haven't finished the book yet so I can't vouch for the merit of it as a whole, but I can say that the majority of what I've read so far has been illuminating. I encourage all my friends who are introverts (which is, basically, all my friends) to at least have a skim of Quiet. It'll make you feel so much better about being the way you are.

TV Theme Songs

I read a blog post last week in which the author was discussing what she considered to be the greatest TV show theme songs of all time. Now, I don't tend to toot my own horn--as one friend put it, "you don't even have a horn" (but I do have a friend!)--but it's high time that people knew a secret about me; a secret of which I am very proud: I have impeccable taste in television theme songs. I mean downright stupendous. So I am going to do what I do so well and so often (but only in my head) and give my opinion when no one asked it. Here are my favorite TV theme songs in the history of TV theme songs. There seem to be two trends, which you'll no doubt notice: 1) nothing beats the '90s, and 2) instrumental theme songs + Olivia trying to be all the instruments at once = undeniably permanent singlehood.

Boy Meets World

(If you don't love this you have no soul)

Brotherly Love

(I'm telling you, this one's a jam)

Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman

(Seven-year-old Olivia drove her mother NUTS humming this)

CSI: Crime Scene Investigation

(Sixteen- through eighteen-year-old Olivia drove her mother NUTS singing this)

The West Wing

(This is what two months alone in an Australian apartment sound like)

30 Rock

(To be honest, because I worship Tina Fey, this could sound like shit and I would still love it)

Weeds

(Admit it, Sarabellum, you love it)

The Golden Girls

(This sounds infinitely better when in the company of one Casey Langford)

The Nanny

(Scotty Boy Lyons, if you're reading this, come home and sing this with me!)

Law & Order: Special Victims Unit

(It is surprisingly difficult to find just the opening credits of this show)

Honorable mentions:

Will & Grace

McLeod's Daughters (for its sentimental value)

Clarissa Explains it All (I'm a fan of anything you can "na" to)