The Obligation of Art

Today I went to the vanilla soft-serve temple of pretentiousness that is the Guggenheim. And look, I’m not about to say that the art in there is objectively shit, only that there are far too many people in there who, on a profound level understood by God alone, desperately do not want to be there.

The first clue was the group of girls who had huddled around a bunch of lines on paper. They stood there, staring at a print, and nodding to each other as if to say, “Indeed, this painting of random brown lines in no way resembles the other twenty paintings of brown lines in this room. Or indeed any of the other paintings of brown lines in the next two rooms.” In awe of their art appreciation I stared at them for a little longer, only to find that when each one thought the others couldn’t see her, she’d surreptitiously look at the other two with a pained and uncomfortable look that clearly said, “Am I the only one who doesn’t get it?”

Somehow this group of three girls ended up in an art museum that not a single one of them wanted to be in or understood—and this is common for art museums. This is how most people end up in art museums: “Hey, we should check out the Guggenheim!” suggests one friend, remembering as soon as the words come out that she actually hates art. She had seen a poster for it somewhere, felt pressured into becoming more “cultured,” and now…shit…now she’s fervently praying that one of the friends will say, “No thanks, I find the mold growing in my shower far more interesting to look at.” But no, God has no mercy. So the other friends smile and say, “Hey! What a great idea,” while grimacing on the inside and remembering the endless three hours spent in the Met the last time one of their friends forgot that the entire human race secretly hates art.

And this is how you end up at the Louvre, jockeying for a position among a crowd of hundreds of people who similarly secretly could not give a shit about the Mona Lisa. This is how art museums make their money. Because no one has the balls to admit that they find art museums spectacularly boring. And this is how we end up with crowded museums filled with people cocking their heads to the side, the last resort of the desperate. “Maybe if I turn my—nope, still looks like shit.”

The best were the people on dates. I saw a cheerful lady dragging around a man, shuffling with a brave but stricken look on his face that reminded me of my subway reading, “The Imitation of Christ,” in which we are encouraged to bear suffering and not seek to escape the situation. But best of all was the couple who were clearly only remaining in the Guggenheim to justify the price they paid for their tickets. “Uh, should we look at this one now?” said the man, half-heartedly pointing at yet another framed piece of paper with some lines on it. “Um. Yeah. I guess,” said the lady, as they wearily dragged their feet through the confused/bored/in denial crowd and tossed a forlorn glance over their shoulders towards the exit.

Usually at art museums I just pretend to read the little blurbs next to the pieces, but today I was feeling adventurous. I found that when I read them I could easily imagine a man with a fake English accent, in ceremonial tweed, squat-talking and waving his hands around while squinting his eyes to convey to you the exact levels of his pretentiousness, lest you underestimate them. This art “engenders emotion,” or “fosters an expression of necessity through color,” and everything is “explored.” Every piece of art “defines” or “redefines” some abstract noun that you hadn’t ever learned in 17 years of private education, and everything is a study, such as “a study of lines,” making me imagine an artist wearing safety goggles and sweating over test tubes for hours on end only to exclaim, “EUREKA! I HAVE MADE LINE!”

Staring at what was, to me, a sheet of gold on a black background, but what was actually a “journey,” I read the following sentence: “The luminosity of gold and the seeping shadows of obsidian evoke parallel visions of eternity.” And I just stood there and thought to myself,

Does it though?

Sometimes I wonder if these art-blurb writers are actually part of a humiliating conspiracy. Some of the more enthusiastic people in the gallery provided further evidence. See, there was this man in a black turtleneck, a tweed jacket, khakis tucked into his boots, goatee, and glasses.

He would walk up to a painting and then, as if overwhelmed by the painting’s majesty, would whip his glasses off in astonishment, and then continue to stare at the painting in amazement. As someone who is extremely nearsighted, I don’t understand the logic behind this, but that’s okay. No, what made this remarkable is that after doing this he would let out a “YES” that was almost Marian in the depth it conveyed, and then would put his glasses back on, proceed to the next painting…and then do the same “LOOK AT HOW MOVED I AM!” glasses removal for each painting. I liked to imagine him to be the sort of person who at home would be eating a bowl of cereal in front of the TV, channel surfing, and dropping the bowl in amazement with what each new channel had to offer.

 In spite of  his constant cycle of being deeply moved, he somehow managed to compose himself. For a while I saw him standing near the exit, with one hand holding his tweed jacket over his shoulder and the other hand on his hip, standing like a jackass superhero in khakis. “Fear not, I bring you gratuitous corrective eyewear!”

I’ll be honest with you: I have been floored by one piece of art in my life. So maybe I’m just an emotionless bitch, but I’ve decided that you do not get to let every single piece of art exert glasses-removing levels of emotional power over you. Surrendering that way to every painting makes you the emotional equivalent of the French, and that’s not okay.

Being the contrary person that I am, part of me wants to stand in front of the elevator, contemplate it with crossed arms, and when it opens scream “YES!” and throw myself to the ground. “YES,” I’ll continue while writhing on the ground, completely moved and overwhelmed by the art of opening elevator doors, “CLEARLY THE ARTIST EXPLORES THE NOTION OF THE NECESSITY OF DISLOCATION—THROUGH COLOR!” And everyone in the gallery, here by obligation, would look at me and think, “Well, shit, I really don’t get art.”

CAN WE GO?!

I’m on the District Line somewhere between Embankment and Upminster, my legs straining to prevent my enormous suitcase from falling on anyone and my brain straining to figure out what the hell I’m going to do with my life. It’s officially my anniversary of job seeking, and I’m riding this train with a fresh sting of rejection. And even more than rejection, fresh affirmation that I’m probably not supposed to be doing the one thing I’m qualified to do: teach. I mean, I am supposed to teach, but I don’t think I’m meant to be a teacher.

I’m sitting there with a growing sense of panic, the kind where you think “IS IT HOT IN HERE?” and suddenly your clothing all feels tight and you just want to vomit everything, but there’d be nothing to vomit anyway because you’re too upset to eat. The kind of panic where, even after the train has emptied as you’re now far from the city center, you feel like there isn’t enough air in the train and you’re going to suffocate. Oh God everything is so shit, I’m so shit, oh God oh God oh God I can’t take it anymore I just want to cut my own head off, make it stop, I just want to scream—

And then suddenly someone screams. But it’s not me. We’d been stopped somewhere near wherever West Ham plays, but we’d been stopped for an obscenely long time. Train stopped, doors opened, waiting for no apparent reason. People were starting to get a bit impatient, when this woman’s voice from a different train car called out, “CAN WE GO?!”

After the first time she said it there was a long pause. Me and the person sitting across from me exchanged bug eyes, almost wondering if we had imagined it. But sure enough, she broke through the quiet again, this disembodied voice shrieking, “CAN WE GO?!” But we still didn’t go. We still sat there with the doors opened. So the voice asked again, this time louder: “CAN WE GO?!” And then with even more desperation: “CAN WE GO?!” Then again and again, louder and louder: “CAN WE GO?! CAN WE GO?! CAN WE GO?! CAN WE GO?!” Towards the end it sounded like she was about to start crying, not with sadness, but with frustration of the futility of her efforts to get the train moving. “CAN WE GO?! CAN WE GO?! CAN WE GO?!”

For a while I sat there with a vague smile on my face. I grew up thinking that English people were all quiet, polite and passive, and here was further evidence to prove my thesis formed last year that actually English people are some of the most in-your-face and/or obscene people I’ve ever met (I say that with love and admiration). I was amused, to say the least. But then I thought harder about this woman yelling at the train.

“CAN WE GO?!”

I think it pretty succinctly sums up how I feel right now. You know, some unemployed people don’t really have a clear sense of where they want to go, and even some of them just want to sit on the couch and laze around all day, never growing up. I’m not one of those people. I’m pretty enthusiastic about getting my life started (provided that I can still have the occasional “Fat Elvis” couch-sitting marathon). I have a very clear idea of what I would like my life to look like. Sure, I’m willing to compromise—my imaginary Beagle doesn’t HAVE to be named Simon Peter—but I think I have some very clear “career” goals that I’ve been trying to pursue. I want to go, I want to get this started. Let’s GO! Why aren't we going? CAN WE GO?!

Unfortunately, no door that I’ve tried opening has been unlocked. Actually, I feel a bit like how I felt a couple weeks ago when a friend lent me the key to her flat with instructions on how to find her flat and I, being jetlagged (okay, even without jetlag I’m this much of a bozo), spent about 25 minutes trying desperately to get into a perfect stranger’s flat. Eventually I did figure out that my friend’s flat was around the corner, and I was able to laugh about it. But to go back to my life in general, I feel like I have a key that does not fit into ANY door. Because, my God, have I tried a lot of doors.

So anyway, back to the train. This woman is screaming “CAN WE GO?!” and that’s pretty much what I mentally scream at my life every day. Eventually the train did go, and it had absolutely nothing to do with the fact that this woman had screamed at it to do so. Part of me wonders if I should stop mentally screaming at my life because, like the train, my life isn’t going to take orders like that. But a larger part of me thinks that it must feel amazing to just let dignity go to shit and scream at the train for a bit.

Giraffe cranes with a taste for blood.

I wish people had “for hire” lights, just like taxis. I don’t mean “for hire” like we’re all prostitutes, I mean “for hire” in the “I’m ready and willing to interact with other homo sapiens at this moment” sense. It’d be perfect for those days when I want people to fuck off—I’d just turn off the light and only tourists and others ignorant of taxi protocol would continue to try to hail a conversation. Because sometimes you (and by you I mean me) have days where you don’t want to be rude to people and you can’t just tell them the truth: that right now the thought of interacting with another person makes you desperately want to vomit. And because humans don’t have “for hire” lights, the only option left is to hide. And think about giraffes.

That’s really what I did today. Apologies to people trying to track me down, but I need to think about giraffes much more than I need to interact with other people right now.

Before I talk about giraffes, I think I need to talk about cranes for a bit first. See, I’ve been thinking about cranes and claws for a while. Mostly because a few nights ago I had a dream that the school I was working at suddenly materialized in a claw machine that I was controlling. So then I dreamed that I could pick up students and teachers who pissed me off, hoist them up into the air, and then drop them into what Dream Sam recognized as nuclear waste, but which Awake Sam recognizes was actually horse shit.

Another thing that has got me thinking about cranes a lot is the fact that every day on the drive home we catch a glimpse of the city. There’s this one moment in particular where we get off the freeway and you see this glorious bit of green, and the city’s famous buildings sort of poke through the newer buildings and the green and…and…I can’t really describe it. But I love it.

But then there are construction cranes. Oh my God, there are cranes. Cranes everywhere. But not that much construction… For a while I had convinced myself that the cranes were actually an invading alien race, quietly biding its time until it had bred enough new cranes to form a crane army for a hostile takeover. Now, of course, I see that’s ridiculous. See, these cranes peer their heads over the houses and famous spires of the city like giraffes sticking their heads over the railings of the zoo’s giraffe enclosure to say “Herro!” to tourists.

Yes, dear reader. I am convinced that cranes are actually mechanical giraffes bred in the locked, underground laboratories of this city by creepy graduate students from the Ukraine to kill the people of this town.

Igor: “We’ve done it! We have successfully created the world’s first mechanical giraffe!”

Evgeny: “MUAHAHA!”

Igor: “And now we shall let these creatures loose on the city to wreak havoc, these giraffe cranes with a taste for blood! MUAHA—“

Evgeny: “And Cheerios.”

Igor: “Sorry?”

Evgeny: “They are giraffe cranes with a taste for blood…and Cheerios. I fed them Cheerios, too. They seemed to quite like them…”

Igor: “[*heavy sigh*]”


And so they’ve planted these mechanical giraffes everywhere in the city. I sat and stared for an hour at one in particular today, and I’m convinced he is a mechanical giraffe who wants to avenge the brutal turning into scrap metal of his father, the great giraffe crane king, Okonkwo. I imagine him going on a vengeful rampage through the city. “Nooooo!” people would scream as he picked them up and lifted them over the city before dropping them to be impaled on one of the city’s dreaming spires. Well, the few Israelis he’d find would say, “No no no no no” in a rapid fire, but everyone else would definitely go for the one “Nooooo!”

And so Chinua Achebe, this vengeful giraffe crane, lies dormant as the students and hordes of open-mouthed Japanese tourists pass by him, not knowing what level of monster lies in wait on the corner, just by that pub and that library.

But I know.

Back in college

Back during my quick stint as a film major at college I had a really good looking professor. Staring at this man during class made all those hours of pretentious films that we had to watch allllll worth it. But as hot as he was, and as much as I dubbed Fridays "Hot Prof Day" because I had his class and another looker's class, this guy was a shit teacher.

Okay, maybe that's a bit unfair. Having gained a bit of teaching experience myself now, I have a lot more sympathy for him than I did back when I was 19. I realize now that sometimes students will make contributions in class for which all the best pedagogical theorists agree the only appropriate response is "What the fuck are you talking about?" And I also realize that sometimes kids will ask questions that I have to wonder what language they're speaking in. And frequently when you ask kids for an answer to a question they'll come up with some answer so horribly WRONG that only Satan himself could have planted it in the child's head.

So anyway, this professor would have us screen our short films in front of the class. My one and only film made as a film major was about a Jew getting so pissed off about Campus Crusade for Christ that he ends up leading an exodus to Skokie, IL. But you didn't really need to know that.

Anyway, after each film was screened the professor would flip on just one of the lights. There he'd stand, only half of him lit by a small pool of weak, orange light in an otherwise dark room, and he'd spout off awkward comments. Trying to express an interest in our beginners' work but clearly not sure how, he'd say things like, "Wow. So what was up with [*insert the worst part of a student's project*]?" He didn't say much, usually just one line, but the one line was without fail unintentionally awful. The sort of thing that would make you want to step outside, go up to the water outside, and slowly immerse yourself in Lake Michigan and never come up for air. Then, silently gloating over someone else's failure while also realizing that we were next, the audience of film students would sit in awkward stillness, someone would cough uncomfortably, another person would give a good ol' SNUUUUURF to remedy their runny nose caused by the Midwestern winter, and then the professor would ask us to put on the next film.

Repeat for each film.

Besides Professor HotStuff and his awkward comments though, there were a lot of other things to look forward to when it came to film class. And when I say a lot of other things I really just mean Penny*. Or maybe it was Penni. Or Peny? I don't know. Penny seems too normal for this girl, one of my dear film classmates. I remain fully convinced that she was a very nice person, but my God was she delightfully bizarre. Years from now when I'm old and gray and about to die alone in my house with my 500 cats (all of whom I will detest), I think her coats are what I will remember about this period of my life.

What I remember is that she would wear enormous fur coats. Like, MASSIVE fur coats. They were usually cut short, almost a bit like crop top fur coat. She had several different fur coats, but the one thing they all had in common was that they all made her look like a yeti. I always used to anticipate her arrival to class because she was one of those people who is physically incapable of arriving on time to anything, so every Friday she would waltz in about 20 minutes late like it ain't no thang, and she would disrobe. And off would come an absolutely ENORMOUS and unspeakably furry coat. And then it would take her another five minutes for the coat to be lovingly tucked into a vacant seat like it was not just an enormous collection of dead, fluffy animal skins but instead a pile of fluffy and inanimate puppies. I mean, I was a theatre/film major--I loved a good production, and this definitely counted.

I'm also convinced that she had some sort of a religious obligation to have at least 10 animals on her at any given moment, much like a Sikh's Five Ks. On one memorable occasion I watched her take off a gigantic light brown fur coat only to find that she was wearing a suede hippie-indian vest. With colorful embroidery. And which was lined with even more yeti fur.

I also liked the pillbox hats that she would wear. They were exactly like what Jackie Kennedy used to wear, except that Penny's had the same texture as latex. And they were metallic and neon. They looked a bit like what I would imagine we think hookers would have worn in the 1960s (regardless of how they may have actually dressed.


Anyway, that was my undergraduate experience. Just thought you should know.

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Yet another subject I suck at teaching

(from yesterday)

In addition to being the worst geography teacher ever, I found out today that I’m the worst food tech teacher (home ec teacher for Americans) in the history of English education. Not because I don’t know any proper information about food (well, I don’t), but because I am a firm believer in bowl-licking. Should I ever become a mother, I will probably be one of the few in the history of the modern world that would not shriek, “BUT YOU’LL GET SALMONELLA!” when I catch my children eating more brownie mix than they’ve poured into a baking dish. No, I’ll say, “Eat up!”

And all 28 of my theoretical children will die of salmonella.

So today in food tech we were working with cake icing—salmonella was not an issue here as icing is just sugar and butter. However, as a teaching assistant for today’s six lessons I was expected to figuratively slap the hands of the little devils who stuck their hands into their bowls of icing for a cheeky little taste. And THIS has proven to be my most challenging task as a teacher. Because I can’t blame them for it. I mean, fuck me, if I weren’t 23 and a trainee teacher I’d be fighting those kids tooth and nail for a share of their icing. God bless ‘em, lick away, the time when that will no longer be socially acceptable is fast approaching for people their age. Lick away, children.

On a related note, I hated that the proper teachers made one class leave their cupcakes for later because the kids had gym immediately afterwards and would get sick. That’s the whole fucking point. If you eat yourself sick after the age of 18 you’re a pig, but under 18 and you’re just a kid. Let kids be kids, I say.

But back to my main point: licking the bowl. It’s hard to tell the kids off for something I don’t think is all that wrong (yeah, I know it’s not hygienic in general, but in this instance it was a private bowl of icing, not for public consumption). To me it’d be like telling the kids off for liking Doctor Who or wanting to learn Hebrew. Some of the poor dears didn’t want to be naughty and asked me, “Can I lick the bowl?” And I had a burning desire to yell, “FUCK YEAH!” and triumphantly pump my fist in the air.

Realizing that if I acknowledged their question I would have to tell them no and kill a part of my soul, I chose to tactfully ignore the question. After their question I would let my eyes suddenly glaze over and act as though, “Oh wow, something absolutely fascinating just happened out the window and I’m going to walk away from you now to go check it out.” And then I secretly hoped that they would take the opportunity to go ahead, embrace their joyful youth, and shove a hearty thumbful of pink frosting into their mouths while none of the teachers were looking.

The problem is that towards the end of every lesson the kids got wise, and those mischievous surreptitious dips into their bowls of frosting gradually turned into blatant icing feasts. Which, let me clarify, I do not give one solitary shit about. The other teachers, however, kept glaring at me whenever a child would snarf some icing and I said nothing to the child in question.

Finally this one kid was quite overtly piping frosting directly into his mouth. I thought this was the greatest thing I’d seen all day, as this kid was clearly the happiest kid on the planet, with his head tipped all the way back and the piping bag in the air guiding a steady supply of blue heaven into his mouth. He just looked absolutely thrilled, with that look of joy on his face that you rarely see in children at school. Part of me wanted to give him a nod of solidarity, as if to say, “I’m with you in spirit, buddy. If you fuckers weren’t in this room with me I’d definitely give that a go.” But responsibility kicked in.

Not wanting to be too much of a hypocrite, I chose to say something friendly, something like, “You know, that icing would taste much better if you put it on the cupcake you’re decorating first.”

And this boy briefly put his bag of diabetes down and let the mirth disappear from his face. Suddenly he became very serious as he told me, “No, it wouldn’t, Miss.” He wasn’t trying to be cheeky, he was just speaking the truth.

All I could do was look at him, smile, and say, “You’re right.”

Paul's Letter to Philemon...as read by me.

NB/CAVEAT EMPTOR/CAVE CANEM/CARPE DIEM: Just remember that you’re reading this blog by choice. Since I’m not forcing anyone to read this I feel free to write poorly and write offensively. So having said that, I just want to stress that if you’re religious—particularly Christian and religious—you might want to give this post (and all of my posts) a miss. To be fair, you might even consider giving me a miss.

HERE THERE BE DRAGONS…AND PROFANITY. AND ALSO A BIT OF BLASPHEMY.

(written last night)
I had another one of those moments today where I realized that I’m foreign. And no, I don’t mean foreign in the nationality sense, which is pretty much a constant revelation, I mean foreign as in I clearly belong on another planet. See, today I was in the library reading Paul’s letter to Philemon, and I came across the sentence, “When I remember you in my prayers, I always thank my God because…” (followed by several verses of Paul rambling on as Paul is wont to do).

I just had to push my chair back and chuckle like a fat person at Thanksgiving. Maybe since I’ve been in a slightly down mood this week I’m desperate to cling to anything even remotely giggle-worthy, but I was vastly amused by what was implied in that “when.”

“WHEN I remember you in my prayers…”

It suggests that there are specific instances when Paul includes Philemon in his prayers, while other times Philemon goes un-prayed for. I liked to imagine that sometimes Philemon pisses Paul off so much that he leaves the slave-owning bastard out of his prayers purely out of spite. Kneeling by his bedside in the evening, sometimes Paul charitably prays for Philemon, while other times he says, “…and please Lord bless the Romans, the Corinthians, maybe even the Hebrews—but forget about Philemon because that guy’s a dick!” Maybe (no, definitely) it’s inappropriate to use this kind of language when talking about the Bible, but I really liked the passive-aggressive “FUCK YOU” that was captured in that “when.”

Now exploding with shamefully nerdy laughter, I rushed across the library to see what the original Greek said. The word “devastated” does not even begin to cover how I felt when I discovered that this delightful “when” was nowhere to be found in the hideous jumble of strange shapes and syntax that is Greek.

When I felt my face fall I realized that I am foreign. I’m sitting in a library laughing at the Bible while everyone else in my program is out getting shitfaced to celebrate that our week has finished. And it’s not like I wasn’t invited—I was, I just chose to hang out in the library and giggle over my interpretation of an English rendering of Paul’s word choice instead. I’m perfectly happy sitting in the Arctic library by myself at night with the understanding that the rest of the world is out being awesome, but surely my comfort with that is weird. Even the poor bastards training for the priesthood had cleared out of the library, having probably effed off to the pub ages ago because everyone in this country is always effing off to the pub.

To be fair, today’s realization that I’m clearly a weirdo started developing earlier in the day when I become conscious of the fact that I had spent a solid 15 minutes staring at the way someone’s ears would sort of bounce when they talked. No fucking clue what they were talking about; all I got from that conversation was that they have bouncy ears. This raised the all-important question of “Are my ears that bouncy?”

I used to think that I had that facial recognition problem that people sometimes have, you know, where they can’t recognize anybody. See, I can know somebody but bump into them on the street and not have the faintest idea who they are. But I think the real problem is that I can have hour-long conversations with people and focus with religious dedication on one particular aspect of their face or one unique mannerism. At the end of the conversation I am intimately acquainted with the way their nose wiggles when they say certain sounds or the way their top lip curls up like a growling dog when they laugh or the particular way in which they wring their hands when listening—but I’ll miss out on more obvious aspects of their appearance, like the fact that their hair is blonde or that they are missing an ear.

Still though, I’ve had a truly lovely day of giggling over Greek (I learned how to say “_____ begat _____” in Greek today), the Bible, wiggling ears, and everything in between. If that is foreign, I don’t want to be native. Because, as the song goes, “Damn it feels good to be me.”

Dead Anglican Monk Ghosts

The other day I had print something, so obviously I went to the mortuary chapel to take care of that. I should probably explain that my college used to be a monastery, and apparently all the old monks used to go to one wing of the complex to die. Once dead they’d be carted down the hall to the mortuary chapel, which is now our computer room.

To be honest, I have to question how much of this is true. I know I heard the story from a priest, and when has a priest ever lied, but I can’t help feeling like the whole thing was made up for shock value. You know, the other colleges have stories like, “JRR Tolkien used to sit at this very chair!” or “And in this room, CS Lewis probably took a dump!” Tourists and students alike faint with excitement at the mere suggestion of historical connections, no matter how tenuous. And, as much as I like Fort Jesus, we just don’t have that kind of history. Because “people used to die in our college” is kind of the trump card of the desperate, the Helen Keller or Hitler card in “Apples to Apples” if you will.

Still, just in case, I insist on propping the door open when I’m in there alone at night. While not entirely sure if the suggestion of death has made me perceive an aura of death in that hallway or if there is a genuine aura of death there, I don’t like to take any chances. I figure if I prop the door open the chances of the ghost of some dead Anglican monk coming out of the walls and killing me for being Jewish are significantly lower than if I were to close the door.

So last night I was in this creepy chapel that smells of death (that is, if death smells of printer toner and faint body odor) when all of the sudden the door facing the open computer room door opened. Out from the darkened room stepped a girl, maybe about 8 or 9, who made intense eye contact with me. She gave me that look that you always get from your roommate’s friends. I’m not referring to any roommate in particular, I just mean that it’s a universal truth that if your roommate has friends over and you enter the room, all of the friends will turn to stare and give you a look that says, “Who the fuck are you and what the fuck are you doing here?” After they’ve met you their look drops the “Who are you” part, but they will always give you the “What the fuck are you doing here?” part. I’m genuinely fascinated by this look because I’m deeply curious to know what they could possibly think I was doing in my own apartment. I want to respond to their silent “What the fuck are you doing here” look with a casual shrug and an “Um, living.”

Anyway, this little girl gave me that look, probably minus the “fuck” because she isn’t even aware of that word yet, being 8 or 9. We had an intense minute or so of just staring at each other, a minute in which I had to fight the urge to shout a word, any random word, just because I felt so uncomfortable. Luckily before I could shout “CHESTNUTS!” the little girl peered round the corner of her door and started shouting at someone down the hall. I know it wasn’t in English, maybe it was French. Yeah, I know it’s terrifying that I did a bazillion years of French and the best description of this kid’s language that I can give you is, “Maybe it was French.” But get over it. Most of my brainpower at that moment was being devoted to planning escape routes for various horrific hypothetical scenarios involving the ghosts of dead Anglican monks.

So what’s your computer room like?

The Fiiiinaaaaall COUNTDOWN

Yesterday the song “The Final Countdown” came up on my iPod, and I immediately thought of my brother.


Before I continue, please get this video going. And turn up your speakers. Turn them up as loud as they will go.

My brother’s 14 months older than me, and when we were in 11th and 12th grade (Year 12 and 13) we had finally reached the age when having a sibling so close in age finally stops sucking so much. Instead of acting like total little bitches and tattling on each other from the backseat, now we were old enough to peaceably have the car to ourselves, and we were in total agreement about one thing in particular—every single afternoon, as soon as we started to pull out of the school parking lot, “The Final Countdown” had to be blasted.

I almost mean “blasted” in the literal sense. The force of the music beating out from the speakers felt like hundreds of small explosions, to the point where we would roll down the windows for fear that the sheer force of the volume would blow them all out, and the bass would rumble out with the intensity that jostles your internal organs out of place. I’m pretty sure that this daily ritual is entirely responsible for any hearing loss I may currently be suffering from. Hell, even if I ever get cancer I’m sure that it’d be somehow directly linked to this epically loud music.

I don’t really have a point in sharing all of this. Well, I guess my point is that I’m feeling a little nostalgic. It felt strange—and a little fantastic--to think that I’m studying to be a teacher and living in an Anglican seminary in England while he’s studying in a Lubavitch rabbinical school in the US, and I had to wonder how the hell we got to those places from that car blasting “The Final Countdown” in a high school parking lot in Los Angeles.

So this one time I died at Freshers' Fair

I feel like every single day of my life my sneaking suspicion that I’m not quite like everyone else gets confirmed. That’s not to say that I’m BETTER than everyone (though, come on, you know I am), it’s just that I seem to be on a slightly different frequency. Last week I had another fine example of this characteristic that defines me when I became convinced, while in line for Domino’s Pizza vouchers, that I had in fact died.

I suppose some context would be helpful. Because I like to collect flyers and other things that I’ll simply throw away later, I decided to go to the Freshers’ Fair, which (for my American readers) is the university’s activities fair. After carefully considering which clubs sounded the most appealing in my thoughtful and discriminating mind, I ended by signing up for any group that harassed me into giving them my e-mail address. So basically I’m now a member of everything. Of my own free will I signed up for the Doctor Who Club (run by people who, quite predictably, make me look like I have social skills), the Walking Club, and the Conservatives.

So anyway, towards the end there was a line where you could get coupons and vouchers for Domino’s Pizza. I didn’t even really want Domino’s Pizza because I’ve been eating so much cake that if I eat even one slice of pizza I think my pants are just going to concede defeat and split open. “You win this time, Sam’s Caloric Intake,” they’ll sigh as they wave the white flag of my underwear. But everyone else seemed so excited about the free pizza, and I so badly wanted to fit in…so I stood in line.

A pimply employee came down the line handing out vouchers, one for each student, while we waited in line to get to the main table. I saw him come down the line, closer and closer to me, handing a voucher to the person in front of me, walking right past me, then handing a voucher to the person behind me. Not wanting to make a big deal out of not receiving something I didn’t even want in the first place, I just shut up and continued to stand in line. But then two people walked in and, without even noticing my existence, cut the line right in front of me.

It was at this point that I realized that something was up. I appeared to be invisible. “Aw shit,” I calmly observed, “I’m dead, aren’t I.” Wracking my brain I tried to deduce how exactly I managed to die at Fresher’s Fair, I realized that I didn’t particularly give a shit how I died now that I was dead. To be honest, the five minutes in which I thought I was dead I was probably the least scared of death I’ve ever been in my life. Like, if this is how calm and relaxed I’ll be when the time actually comes, I mean, I’m good to go.

After a couple minutes of just standing around taking in my newfound mortality, my first plan of action as a dead person was to decide to go to the movie theater. I figured that I may be dead, but the awesome thing about this version of death, that is being an invisible person that still walks the Earth as a ghost or spirit or whatever, is that at least I can go to the movies for free now. I looked at my watch and wondered if I could make the matinee of “The Lion King.”

Taking my first steps as a confirmed dead person, I strode towards the door with the confidence of someone who knows that from now on clothing is optional—and I immediately bumped into someone. “Oh, pardon me,” he Englishly apologized on my behalf. At that point I rather loudly thought out loud, “Shit!” and the poor polite guy probably assumed that I was some kind of a nut who swears at people after colliding with them. But no, the truth is that I wasn’t pissed off at this guy for getting in my way. The truth was that I was just pissed off I wasn’t dead because now I have to pay 12 bucks to go see “The Lion King” in 3D.

"HELEN!!!!!!!!!!"

Say what you want about the teeth, the food, the constant drunkenness, and the unsettling obsession with ceremony, but the British have fantastic emergency exit signs. The United States of America is supposed to be the land of opportunity, where the streets are paved with gold, where anybody can become president someday, and where clouds rain puppies—but I don’t think our emergency exit signs reflect our mission. For those of you who are not American I should explain that, unlike the mirthful British signs, the American signs say quite simply “EXIT” in the same, uniform lettering, and they usually glow a sinister red or green. They’re almost German in their efficiency.

Now for my American readers I should probably explain what emergency exit signs look like here.
Basically it is a silhouette man making a mad dash for the exit.

I’d like to imagine this poor silhouette man running from the flames in a state of complete, pants-shitting terror. “You guys, we have to get the fuck out of here!” he seems to say. “It’s gone all backdraft!” he seems to add. Forgetting all the fire drills they practiced in the land of silhouettes that exist on various signs, he makes a sprinting beeline for the exit and bowls over small children in the process. At this point the animalistic instinct to preserve his own life takes over, and he finds himself practically frothing at the mouth like a rabid beast and plowing through a crowd of silhouette people who have gotten between him and the exit, like he's one of the less classy men on the Titanic.

While being the first to admit that I usually read into things far too much, I’d like to hope that designers, like me, had a full backstory for the poor man on the sign fleeing the flames. Maybe he isn’t the selfish, fearful man that I think he is. Maybe he’s married to the silhouette woman from public restroom signs (yeah, you’d think she’s married to the men’s restroom silhouette man, but that’s because you’re such a racist), and he’s actually fleeing quickly because he wants to make sure his wife, who’s in another area of the building, is okay.

Although the silhouette man does find her eventually, she’s tragically trapped in an upper floor of the building. “Take care of the children, darling!” she calls out from the window, with a stoical look on her blank, silhouette face as the flames climb higher. “HELEN, NOOOOOO!” her husband screams as the silhouette firefighters usher him away. They try to wrap him in a blanket, and he throws it off, raving like a madsilhouetteman, “WHY? WHY? NOOOOO! HELEN! WHY, SILHOUETTE GOD? WHY?”

Hmm. Yeah, I’m probably reading too much into those signs.

Can you paint with all the colors of the wind?

So I think I made one terrible mistake coming here. And by that I mean I have accidentally passed up my one obvious opportunity in life to reinvent myself. No one here knew me when I first arrived. See, I’ve just been portraying myself as Sam, the RE student-teacher who likes Doctor Who, aspires to be Laura Ingalls Wilder, and dances to the Footloose soundtrack alone in her room. Which is fine I guess, because it’s a more or less accurate description of me. But I can’t help feeling like I missed out on a fantastic opportunity to introduce myself to everyone as Pocahontas.