White, Fluffy, and Evil

    During spring break, my parents were debating when we should leave for the airport to catch their 9:30pm flight from Boston to Reykjavik.
    “I think we should leave at 5:30,” my mother said, “just so we know we’re there with plenty of time.”
    My father shook his head. “That’ll put us right into rush hour. We should go later, otherwise we’ll be stuck and get there at the same time anyhow. We should leave at 6:30 or something like that.”
    “But we’re supposed to be there and checked in at least an hour before the flight. 5:30 would get us there in plenty of time.”
    “No it wouldn’t because traffic would slow us down so that we’d get there at the same time as is we’d left at 6:30.”
    “Okay, how about we compromise and leave at 5:30?”
    My father and I glanced at each other.
    My lips pressed together as I tried to suppress a snicker. “That’s not a compromise.”
    My father didn’t bother to hold back. “Well, maybe her kind of compromise!”
    “What?” My mother watched us as we collapsed in our seats laughing.  “I said we could leave at 5:30!”
    “That’s exactly what you said before!”
    “No it isn’t! I said 5:00!”
    We left at 5:30.
    So yeah. Our perspectives at home are a bit out of sync, especially when it comes to my mother. We all get along and serious arguments don’t happen often, but our methods of functioning and aesthetics are a bit different. For example, there’s this ceramic bunny that my mother adores and sets on the dining room table every spring before Easter. It has white fur, a blue ribbon around its neck, and the eyes of Satan. To make it worse, the thing is lying on its back, feet in the air, and stares at where I sit to eat every night. Each time I look up from a bite of food, I find its eyes boring into my soul. It’s saying “Sure I look cute and fluffy, but I know what you do in the dark.” I’ve been telling her for years now that the thing is disturbing. She never believes me. I tried to bring my father into the argument, but he’s a smart guy and decided to sit this one out. I think he went to a nearby fallout shelter…
    Anyhow, as a last ditch attempt to validate my opinion, I sent a picture of the floppy-eared demon to six of my friends over Snapchat, asking whether they thought the thing was creepy or not.
My friend Erica texted me a few minutes later: “Okay why the hell did you just send me that creepy ass bunny? I’m scarred for life thanks a lot X-P ”
Next Brittany: “Why the hell do you have that thing in your house?”
Then James: “Get out.
Run.
Just run.
Fuck.
Fucking run.”
He later added “That thing is objectively creepy.”
    I showed these responses to my mother who, contrary to my father’s tacit prediction, cracked up.
    “Okay!” she said once she got ahold of herself. “We can get rid of it if you want.”
    “You kidding?” I said. “After these sorts of responses? We’re keeping that thing so that I can lord it over you for the next ten years!”
    Perspective can be a funny thing. According to solipsists, it’s the only thing that matters because it is our only evidence that we exist as individuals. To relativity physicists, each frame of reference perceives everything else to move around in relation to it. To the average person, our perception of the world is reality. It determines our tastes and what we think is ethical, thus determining our actions. It is what makes some people think that rap is wonderful and what makes me think that most of it is offensive non-musical dog mess. Memories become skewed because of it and conversations get confusing.
    It’s also what causes me to detest the stereotypical frat boy and love the weirdos, freaks, and geeks. Sure preferences create divisions and confusions, but it also gives people something to bond over. I think it’s much more fun to talk about books and The Muppets than sports and Ke$ha. That limits me from some conversation and makes swimming in glamorous social circles a bit of a trick. Then again, it also makes moving in others easier and fun. The only problem is that, as I have found at least in Massachusetts society, it’s difficult to belong to several social groups. Either you’re one of us or you’re not. You cannot be both a partier and a geek. You cannot be artsy and athletic. I’m all of the above, so where do I go? So often around here, people are forced to choose one aspect about themselves to show and claim as their identity at the expense of suppressing the others. If you want to branch out, you have to go to another end of campus and join a club where no one has ever heard of you. That can work except that, as I said last time, if you aren’t spending every free moment with someone, they tend to forget you around here or think that you have forgotten them.
    It’s a very select and special group of people that can accept any blend of interests in a person. Here, an eclectic is an outcast; a misfit. There are going to be a fair number of them though. There are going to be a handful of people drifting through school society who sort of fit into one group, but don’t conform entirely and can’t quite fit. Those people find each other and, seeing the mosaics of personalities and interests in each other, bond. These are the people that I like. These are the ones who have a hodgepodge of abilities and oddities and accept the same things in others. They give me a place where I have people that I can bounce banter off of and have a good time with any time, not just when our interests align. So if I prefer to pass over Greek life and hang out with the people who will sing a chorus of “Manamana” and get askance looks in the dining hall with me, then I will be happy to stay with them. We can stare right back at those others, reveling in our oddities, and pity them for what they’re missing out on because there’s just no accounting for taste.

Mind The Snow Dick

    There’s something humbling about having your leg broken by a ten-foot tall snow penis. When that tower of phallic snow swings down to deliver the mightiest cock-slap you’ve ever felt, there is a moment of fear which changes to hilarity. What could a giant snow dick do, right? Then you find yourself limping to the university health center a few days later after discovering that a giant snow dick is, in fact, capable of breaking your fibula. I’d like to make this post a meditation on the randomness of life and how we should savor every moment because we never know what will happen, but I can’t honestly do that. I was doing just as much when I tackled that shit over. Call it karma or the three-fold law or whatever. I had the snow schlong coming.
    If the cosmic payback was proportional and any indication, someone must have put a lot of time and love into building that thing because this was back in January and I’m still not cleared by my doctor to run. Perhaps this should be more of a reflection on being mindful of one’s actions, but you’ve heard it all before and don’t need that again. That’s not the college mentality. Around here, the thought process is more along the lines of…
Step 1) “You see something you want to do?”
Step 2) “Yes!”
Step 3) “Do you have the guts to do it?”
Step 4) “Hells yeah!”
Step 5) “Then go do it!”
Step 6) Wake up in a hospital the next day.
    Hey. I didn’t say it was a good thought process. It is what everyone makes of it. The pervasive, mindless, almost hedonistic attitude here makes it law. It also makes it pretty fun to watch. However, between being in a cast and taking an extra class this semester, I have not had much of a chance to observe the local fauna. I’ve spent more time than usual in my room, working and attacking the horde of mints from the dining hall that I stow in my desk.
    While studying and popping peppermints like a druggy pops Percocet, I found myself again and again diverted from writing fiction. I couldn’t understand it. Fiction is my alleged passion and I was not scheduled to do much social stuff, being unfit. Yet something always seemed to prevent me from opening up a story. Every time I thought I could set aside a session for writing, something came up. And here I’d thought I had my priorities straight.
    Around the same time, my Intensive Literary Studies professor was driving our class to examine Romeo and Juliet and why the lovers die in the end. Professor Farrell spoke about how neither Romeo nor Juliet were willing to speak a plain truth to others and that their equivocating led to their demise. He claimed that, by failing to speak plainly, those around them were inclined to believe whatever interpretation suited their own biases. He saw Juliet as the only truly self-aware person in the play. Because of her awareness of both her circumstances and other characters’ motives and vulnerabilities, she was granted a measure of power and control over her own fate that the others did not have because they were slaves to prejudices and to societal expectations.
    The thirteen or so hours that I spent writing my midterm paper for this class gave me a bit of time to think on this. Aside from seeing the truth of it in the play, as characters kept doing dumb stuff like taking a roofie from a priest without considering surrounding events, I was beginning to realize something that I wasn’t quite sure I liked.
    I reviewed my doings over the previous week and found that nothing vital had consumed my free time. I had spent it all hanging around friends. While that’s fun and all, it was not furthering my ambition and I started wondering why I would spend time with them rather than on my vocation. Aside from the obvious pleasant company and desire for companionship, I realized that I felt obligated to spend time with them. Our culture, especially at this school, demands that we spend all of our time socializing. Otherwise you are not normal. Otherwise you are unfulfilled. Otherwise you will be forgotten and ignored. On top of that, I had begun subconsciously to believe that some of the people I hung around needed me. I think that’s the fantasy that we all want to believe. We want to believe that we are vital to someone the moment that they confide in us and lays their troubles bare. I had become dependent upon others’ company to fulfill my desires and out of an urge to fulfill theirs.
    I stopped what I was doing and sat back in my chair. What the hell had I been thinking? Sure, I loved being around people that made me laugh and who I wanted to share my feelings with, but the idea that they needed me? That’s ridiculous! Even if I am important, I’m not the only person around. Everyone I know has other friends that they can go to for their confessions. There’s almost always a spare ear around for someone to talk to. What need have I to be that one other than to build a friendship? If the friendship is established, then they will understand if I disappear for a day or two! I had not lost track of my priorities. I had lost track of my actions and motivations, which is even worse. It’s fine to not know what you want, very few people really do know. What is not okay is being lulled into a trance and doing everything without considering why you are doing it. That’s on par with being a lemming and jumping off of cliffs because you aren’t paying attention.
    The lesson of Romeo and Juliet is that no matter what you do, unless you are aware of your actions and the surrounding circumstances, then you will be pulled into the flow of society and lose control over your own life. Sometimes that’s good. Some people want nothing more than to blackout every college weekend, get a job, and reminisce. Some want more, but spend time doing what others expect of them, like hanging out with friends or joining clubs. What makes me laugh is thinking about those people who decide not to conform to society and use that action as a substitute for their dreams. Instead of fulfilling their goals, they end up drinking and smoking weed, dressing in goth or thug clothes, writing modern poetry, or getting violent. They think they’re doing what they want and being different, but they are doing what every “non-conformist” or “free-spirit” is expected to do.
    Kind of makes you wonder if there’s any special meaning or point to doing what we do in society. The best I can figure is that there really isn’t. We can try to set trends and improve the world, that’s the best, or we can get suckered into the mainstream one way or another, which isn’t a bad thing. It’s all about what makes you happy and fulfills you. However, if you want to control your life and thus have the option to act independently, then you need to be mindful of your own motivations and those of people around you. If you aren’t paying attention to what’s going on around you, then, well, you’ll be the subject of whatever giant snow dildo that decides to turn you into Tiny Tim.
    Ha! This did turn into a mindfulness thing! Bait-and-switch baby!

Great Expectations

    I think that I owe you an apology. I am an entire week behind on this blog which puts me, in total, a whole month behind. If you are new to this blog, then you will discover that this thing is riddled with similar pleas for forgiveness because I have not been very good about posting in a timely fashion.
    I’ll forgo describing most of October in detail as I might have otherwise and just give you the highlights.

                                           

    In the beginning of October, just after the English Society’s initiation, I discovered a plethora of false friends who just hung around me in the hopes of free booze. I next realized that I’ve never had the girl that I have ever pursued and that I’ve always been someone else’s second or third pick myself. Pretty much that entire first week served to reinforce the knowledge of what disgusting, pathetic, and petty creatures we humans are. Soon, the campus brought in therapy dogs for the students and dear God did I need them! Even so, I had a rough time coping with my betrayed trust. Despite immersing myself in creative writing and music and exercise, which usually works, I found myself physically restraining myself from flying into fits of rage and self-loathing after an even closer friend stabbed me in the back. While I would like to say that these emotions weren’t my own fault, I was the one who had decided to trust the bastard who abused a secret that I had told him. He used it so that he could get the girl that I was pursuing and then estrange me from what “friends” I had by twisting the secret and telling it to everyone and their second cousin. Revealing it to the wrong person was my fault, even if the resulting despicable conniving was not.
    Anyhow, after several days, absurd amounts of time in the gym, listening to scores of enraged music, a maniacal bike ride that should have killed me, some blood, and a dozen shattered chopsticks later, I sort of kind of not really got over it. I supposed that I had hoped for too much from people when I should have stuck to what I had grown up believing. I should have remembered to think that people cannot be trusted and that they are always looking out for themselves. Eh. C’est la vie.
    Later, I was introduced to the glories of the school’s TV talk show “Yak Back” where they had me shadow the sound board and camera operators. They were discussing a woman in London who had married herself for one segment. When one of the program’s guests didn’t show, I became an emergency “Yakker” and they had me propose to myself on camera. On public television. Yeah. That happened. Well, I shouldn’t be too worried. Contrary to my expectations, this seems to be a joke show as we just make fun of silly people in sensational tabloid stories. Instead of a program like Wolf Blitzer’s, imagine something more along the lines of the Colbert Report. My job for the third segment, while they were discussing an Australian who had murdered and cooked his girlfriend, was put into the credits as “Official Cat Wrangler” because, yes, the show’s host brought his kitten to the show and it wouldn’t stay on his lap or shoulder. It was adorable.
    My happiness high was then killed the moment I realized that I had to attend another visiting author’s book reading that night. The other two that I had wanted to sleep through weren’t encouraging. However, I was captivated by Kent Wascom and his reading from “The Blood of Heaven.” Between the venue’s more intimate atmosphere, Wascom’s superior and almost poetically gothic writing style, and his references to Poe’s “Masque of the Red Death” in his upcoming book’s prologue, I found the whole experience to be wonderful! I even managed to get a signed copy of the book and chat with the amiable and enthusiastic author. He seemed to appreciate that someone had identified his Poe reference. As an amateur author myself, I knew the excited gleam in his eyes accompanied by the barely restrained dancing and jumping for joy. That look comes from a reader understanding what you had tried to convey or reference, but were unsure whether it had come across or not. This was his inscription:
    “To Matt, for seeing to the dark kernel of Poe in the reading!”
    Well, it was more like a whole ear of corn, as his reference almost directly paralleled or copied the original imagery, but there was nuance and I was proud to recognize it and ecstatic to see how my recognition gratified Mr. Wascom. I know that it is brief and almost meaningless. It has no consequence and for some reason it made me supremely happy. I went to bed with the book beside my head and with the grin of a satisfied puppy on my face.
    Soon after, I drove some friends to the Holyoak mall, questing for Halloween junk (the best kind of junk, mind you!) where, due to my personal errands, we separated. Once I got the mundane stuff over with, I could not find the others for love nor money, as they kept flitting from store to store faster than I could keep up, as girls do. I decided “Screw it, I’ll browse some clothes.” I haven’t actually gone clothes shopping for pleasure in years. Sure, I got the essentials and stuff to go with my suits for boarding school, but I hadn’t gone and bought clothes just because they appealed to me since my sophomore year. Well, long story short, I got clothes that I loved (and were cheap) and they all came together to look like a goth’s outfit and I hadn’t even intended it. Here I am wearing suits just because I like them each week and then I appear in all black with a zip-up hoodie with fake-leather highlights, fingerless black sailing gloves (so warm and useful!), and a beanie with the Scout Regiment emblem from “Attack on Titan” printed on it. What a strange transition…
    Speaking of strange, once we got back from the mall, one of the guys, Pat MacFee, decided to grab his ukulele because the dorms were almost empty for Columbus weekend and there were few people to bother. He started playing, both of us sang, and the night turned into a massive jam session revolving around songs by Katy Perry and Taking Back Sunday. I love these guys! I couldn’t help thinking as Pat and I finished the last harmony in “MakeDamnSure.” I’m not a great singer and the matter was worsened by my unfamiliarity with the songs, but it was hilarious! The sight of two muscular guys singing Katy Perry stuff and playing emo-rock on the ukulele earned looks from passersby that ranged from appreciative to thoroughly confused and they were priceless.
    To cap it all off, I went to the cinema to review “Dracula Untold” for the school newspaper. What threw me for a loop was how I had to cross out the lines that I had prepared regarding how terrible the film was. I couldn’t keep them because the film was actually kind of good. It wasn’t great, but I expected a complete flop, considering Hollywood’s history of botching “Dracula” remakes or any vampire movie in the last eight years.
    I guess that my point is that, while October in many ways was one of the worst months that I’ve ever had since elementary school, many of my expectations were faulty or entirely wrong. I’m usually a good judge of character and I was wrong. I thought that the school TV show would have serious content. I was mistaken. I expected that Kent Wascom’s reading would bore me to tears when I entered and I felt giddy as a schoolboy when I left. I believed that I would always be a straight shooter and, between the new fashion and my tastes in music, I think that I’m turning into an emo (help me). I suppose that I have become too ingrained and comfortable in the parameters that I have set on my life and the categories that I put everything into. I thought that I was accepting and non-judgmental, but these incidents demonstrate that, while I’m not branding people with harsh terms at the get-go, I have allowed myself to be guided by prejudices and expectations. Perhaps I am not so adept at reading people as I thought and perhaps I should just expect that life will throw the unexpected at me, as cliché as that sounds. Live and learn, right? I don’t think that I or anyone can totally overcome our biases and prevent ourselves from assuming. However, maybe I needed this month to remind me that I should be more conscious of what conclusions my brain is drawing before I act on them.

    I hope that everything is fine and dandy in your lives! I realize that I forgot to mention this since starting at UMass, but please leave comments and criticisms for what in the blog I could improve, be it writing style, photos, or anything. Have a great week and enjoy Veterans’ Day. I know that the hardcore drinkers here will.