[ 30.5.03] · [ ]
I can't seem to stop crying. I mean, I suppose I'm always like this to some extent -- I have the physical pain threshold of a fucking marine and the emotional pain threshold of a newborn baby -- but with the exception of the hours I spent last night dreaming that I had to keep stitching my skin together to keep my soul from falling out, I don't think I've gone more than a few hundred minutes in the last five days without weeping, and not more than half a day between complete sobbing-in-a-heap-on-the-floor meltdowns. I'll think I'm done, that I've exhausted my tear ducts, but then I'll be walking down the hall or sitting here at the computer or pushing the buttons in the elevator, and it will start raining down my face again. I haven't seen the whites of my eyes since the weekend. the seniors went to six flags today. I'd signed up for the trip, paid my deposit, had decided that I didn't really care if it rained on us while we waited in rollercoaster lines. I was on the bus, surrounded by a number of my friends who were still looking a little peaked from last night's pub crawl, and I freaked out. there's no way I'll make it through the whole hour-long busride without crying, I thought, and I looked around to tell someone but they were all happily chattering at each other, or already dozing against the windows. I got up and walked to the front of the bus -- "I can't do this," I said, when one of my friends grabbed my arm to keep me there. "I can't." his hand was so hot around my wrist. everyone called out my name, half disapproving and half beseeching, and I turned around so I wouldn't have to see how many there were. somehow, I kept from crying until I was halfway across the grass and out of earshot. the weather has been defying the forecast today, holding its rain up inside clouds and haze (with the exception of a few moments of downpour and, reportedly, hail). I was glad, when I walked out of the science center to go in search of food this morning, that they hadn't made the trip and bought the tickets for nothing. but later, while I sat before the computer in our windowless basement research lab, I thought about how they had grabbed my wrists and promised me the apples from their bag lunches -- no vegan option provided by the dining hall, and I refused to take a cheese sandwich to throw away -- and I started crying again. I was perfectly quiet, but as I held my hands over my face a lake of hot tears pooled at the bottom of my cupped palms and ran into my mouth. most everyone has politely ignored my swollen pink eyelids and bloodshot eyes and wet nose, but a few people have asked me what's wrong. "I'm having some separation anxiety issues," I say. they tell me it'll be okay, and I say I know that. I suppose I do know that, but I don't feel it at all. I can't bring myself to start packing, because I have nothing to cling to except the normalcy of my room, which still has piles of unsorted seminar papers under the bed, a bag of uncooked rice on top of a red milkcrate, my strings of paper cranes hanging from the edge of the closet. but I have to pack. I have to leave. and I really have to get over this crying nonsense before my parents get here.
[ 28.5.03] · [ ]
I want
[ 27.5.03] · [ ]
dear worms, I understand that it's cold and rainy. I know that there have been less than five clear, sunny days this entire month. I know that the ground is a muddy, squishy, sloppy, soggy mess. believe me, I know. but you must have noticed by now that the sidewalks and driveways might as well be lakes, as far as you're concerned. come out of the ground if you must, but stay in the flowerbeds and under the trees. your friends who've ventured out onto the concrete -- and there is no shortage of them, let me tell you; I had to tiptoe my way across to the library this morning -- well, they're not coming back. even those enormous worms, the ones as long as my forearm and nearly as thick around as my pinkie finger, they're being swept away by the currents of rain washing down gutters and into storm drains. I watched them squirming, writhing back and forth like snakes... but I don't have to tell you that worms can't swim. and you know, even when they're not caught in the little rivers that are running over all the paths on campus, those worms are dying. they're being stomped on by feet and squashed under car tires. for every worm I saw this morning wriggling fruitlessly across the sidewalk I saw at least three that were missing an end, spilling stringy white innards out into the rain. I don't want that stuff on my shoes. you may not realize this -- though you should have guessed by now that I have at least a slightly unusual relationship with animals -- but I'm a vegan. I try very hard not to be involved in the death, exploitation, or consumption of any animals, not even beetles or silkworms. believe me, when I tell you to stay off the streets, I have your best interests at heart here. I want you to survive the rain. plus, I really can't stand the smell of cold, dead, mashed-up worm guts. yours, rabi
[ 26.5.03] · [ ]
external honors oral exams are over. the dining hall at lunchtime was strangely segregated: in one room, seniors fresh from their last exams, still dressed up and carrying cheap liquor; in another other, all the professors at the honors luncheon, with the white tablecloths and servers dressed in black bowties. (ben and I leaned over the railing to take a picture -- though mine was only mental -- of all our teachers at our long institutional tables.) I know the torment was unintentional but it was hard to watch the caterers throwing away half-eaten salads and bread rolls as I ate a meal of applesauce and cinnamon sugar, which I had to resort to because the cabbage was cooked in butter and they'd packed away the plain cinnamon. so exams are over and the reports have started to come in. I've heard four high honors, two highest, one plain. my friend, refolding her letter, shrugged and said, "well, honors is better than nothing, right?" I am Nothing, not because I failed any exams but because I was never going to take them in the first place. (well -- it could be argued that it's because I failed some math exams back when I was a freshman and almost-failed some physics exams when I was a sophomore; neither experience did much to convince me that I wanted to take voluntary honors exams.) I've been thinking about asking the registrar if they can write that on my diploma. then I can put it on my résumé: education: swarthmore college, swarthmore pa. BA with No Honors, 2003. major in astronomy; minor in cognitive science. general screw-up. the grad school admissions committees will love that, don't you think?
[ 24.5.03] · [ ]
I woke up extra early this morning, after dreaming that my camera would no longer advance the film after I took a picture, which meant I could never finish the roll and I would never get to see and keep the pictures I took of my friends this semester. thanks for the symbolism, subconscious. now let's just work on the subtlety. it was too early for meal-credit breakfast, so I carried my sweet rice and brown sugar downstairs to the kitchen. there were two housekeepers crouched in the stairwell, scrubbing the railings of the banister. I had to pick my way around their buckets and soapy puddles. neither of them was our usual housekeeper, so even though I wanted to say good morning, I didn't know how. even in the kitchen I could smell their antiseptic lemon-scented cleaning solution. strange to have it coming from the stairs; usually it lives in the showers. after I set my rice soaking, I went back out into the stairwell. the stone landing was cold under my bare feet. "can I help?" they looked at me. I could not have felt more ridiculous, standing there in my pajamas with my hair in a messy braid, staring plaintively up at the two middle-aged black women wearing hairnets and scrub-smocks. I wondered if anyone else could see the upper-middle-class white-privilege sliding down my forearms, dripping off my fingertips, puddling under my toes. I wanted to dunk my head in the soap bucket. "please? I want to." "well, we don't have another rag for you." I could tell nothing from her tone of voice. annoyed? bemused? bored, probably. "I have my own," I said, which I do. I usually use it for dusting, but a little soap would probably be good for it anyway. "I'll go get it." I ran up to my room and grabbed my pink and white towel from the back of my dishcrate. I've always thought it was a bit extravagantly pink for cleaning with, and I was a little embarrassed about bringing it down for the housekeepers to see -- their own rags were a dingy grey -- but at least it wasn't one of the old cloth diapers that we use for cleaning and polishing in my parents' house. "see," I said, flapping it before me as I trotted back down the stairs. neither of the housekeepers said anything, but one of them smiled a little bit and pushed her bucket sideways until it was situated exactly in between us. I sat down on the landing with my legs tucked to the side, my feet dangling in midair above the stairs, and swished my pink towel around in the dirty lemon suds. the water was warm, which surprised me somehow, and the soap stung all the little cuts around my chewed-up fingernails. I wrapped my towel around a railing and ran it up and down, back and forth, watching my cleaning companions out of the corner of my eye, to see if they were watching me. they weren't. I thought of annie and the orphans doing cartwheels over their mops, bent over their scrub-brushes on the stairs, but thought better of singing it's a hard-knock life, opting instead for you're never fully dressed without a smile. I sang it quietly, my voice barely rising above the swish-splash noises of our rags in the bucket and slapping around the railings. for nearly half an hour I scrubbed in the stairwell, scootching down one step at a time, watching the drips from my rag fall three stories to the stone floor on the ground. sometime in there the sun came up, my fingers turned to prunes, and we reached the second-story landing with our buckets. there was a series of water-rings marching down the stairs, marking all the places the buckets had rested on their stop-motion way down. I thought my rice was probably more than finished soaking. "thanks," I said, getting up, meaning for letting me work with them and for keeping my house clean all these semesters. both of them looked up at me and nodded. "bye." I smiled, shy and stupid. "good morning." you'd think with a work ethic like that I could find some time to clean my room one of these days. but it's not clean. there's a stack of dirty tupperware next to the television, my extra sneakers lying next to my desk with their shoelaces sprawled everywhere, a tangle of worn clothes and rumpled blankets on my unmade bed. and now, my dirty pink lemon-scented rag hanging on the corner of my closet door, dripping brown-grey water down the glossy white paint.
[ 22.5.03] · [ ]
being here gets harder and harder, because every moment I spend here -- even in the chilly rain, even now that the dining hall has decided to serve us five-day-old leftovers, even though I do little all day besides sit in a cold windowless room in the basement of a construction site -- makes me remember how much I don't want to leave. I don't want to leave. I don't, I don't. and it's strange because I've left so many things behind, I've been the new kid so many times, and I don't ever remember it hurting like this. I can picture all eight of my empty bedrooms, stripped of their posters and artwork, dusty in the corners where there had been furniture. I remember the day we drove north away from manhattan, with snow rushing into the windshield. I remember when we left our island, watching the movers push our boxes up their rolling ramp into a big white truck. but I don't remember feeling anything, anything like this. it's like breaking up with everyone and everything in my life at once, and I can't take it, and it's not even done yet. I think you should all come up with some scheme to make me feel better.
[ 21.5.03] · [ ]
the name of the new media theatre is misleading on just about every level. first of all, this is not the united kingdom and I don't really know what sort of pretension it's supposed to convey when we spell things with the letters backwards -- not that I didn't do this myself, by accident mind you, for years in elementary school (and you may have noticed I still spell "grey" like a brit), but I am not a community establishment -- but as far as I'm concerned it just looks silly. and really, how are we supposed to know we're in america if people go around spelling things in proper english? (the war!!! signs are not enough these days.) this is the land of nooddl, froot loops, kwik-e-mart. not theatre. once you've found your cultural and geographical bearings, you might think that it's a theater for new media, whatever that would be -- I picture a theater-in-the-round, all dark except for a giant floating animated hologram, and a digitized surroundsoundtrack of course -- but no, it's just the new theater in media, pennsylvania. but it's not even new! it's old. the doors are old. the carpeting is old. the seats are old, and slide back and forth in an alarmingly unnatural way. the art director is old. the audience is old. the coathangers are old. even the tickets seem to be printed on old paper. the only thing that's new is, apparently, the management. certainly hair is not new, though there's nothing wrong with musical revivals. or, as the case may be, american tribal love-rock musical revivals.
we hadn't intended to end up at a musical, only take the train backwards and escape campus for a while. but then we walked past the theater, and it was the last day of the show's run, and one of the red-jacketed ushers looked at us funny and said "no, it's not sold out," like where exactly do you think you are, punks? except I bet the word punk hasn't slipped through her lips in a good twenty-something years. so we took fifty dollars out of my bank account (for only a $1.50 fee -- there are some good things about the suburbs) and took ourselves into the theater. theatre. whatever.
I was busy reading the cast bios and so I didn't see the person who dropped a little slip of paper into my lap; I suppose years of walking through harvard square have taught me to never really notice anyway. I looked at it: is this the war we wanted? well, no, I thought, obviously it isn't. I didn't want any war at all. and then further down: people are dying on the streets daily in laos, cambodia, and vietnam.
"but the war is in iraq," I said, stupidly, before I realized. ross was nice enough to laugh at me only a little.
I still, in spite of multiple exposures, have very little idea what the plot or point of hair is; for me it was enough to listen to the music and giggle to myself as I imagined peter onstage with the tribe and watched the subdued reactions of the crowd of senior citizens that made up most of the audience. I had no idea what to make of those sunday-dressed snow-haired suburban women who squeezed into their narrow seats, laughed when the sinewy actors writhed across each other, kept dead silent when the entire cast appeared naked on stage, then filed out at intermission for cigarettes and fresh air. then again I doubt they knew what the think about us, either, college kids whose parents were even too young (well, mine were) to have draft numbers low enough worth worrying about.
at the beginning of the first act, when the tribe kids were running up and down the aisles in their tight jeans and bare chests, the woman sitting in front of us leaned over and murmured into her husband's ear: "this is going to be wild." I did bite my tongue, but not hard enough to keep from laughing. [ 19.5.03] · [ ]
in one of my most spectacularly subtle moments of stupid audacity since coming to swarthmore, I drew a little pink smily face next to my name on the outside of the envelope that held my astronomy final. then I taped it shut, sealing in all my mistakes, and slid it under my professor's door. all I have left now is my astronomy thesis. baby stars, baby.
[ 17.5.03] · [ ]
on the other hand, one of my favorite things about swarthmore is how there are always small trees. when I'm away from campus I remember it full of the statuesque trees that reach higher and wider than the buildings -- the parallel rows of oak trees lining magill walk outside my window; the tulip trees that make the amphitheater's ceiling, so carefully pruned of their lower branches that all you see looking up is the thick snake of a trunk; the skinny ginkos that drop their rubbery yellow fan-leaves everywhere in the fall; the japanese maples that sprawl sideways and make me think someone has finally figured out how to make play-doh defy gravity; the kwanzan cherries and crabapples and all those trees that dust our world with pink and white petals every spring; even the waxy, prickly holly bushes here are three stories tall -- but when I'm here it's the short saplings I am most enamored of. they never seem to be in the same place from year to year, partly due to transplants and partly because they just keep growing up (like us I suppose), but they are always somewhere, those skinny little things with trunks no stouter than my ankles and branches too slender to bear the weight of a mourning dove, let alone one of our marauding squirrels. there is one baby magnolia that I pass nearly every day going up and down the dining-hall hill, and when it bloomed this spring it looked for all the world as if it were trying to balance soup bowls on its fingers. I like the little trees because they say that my swarthmore will still be beautiful in ten years, and in one hundred years. change and transience are the only real constants in a population of academics, but without the trees it just wouldn't be the same.
[ 14.5.03] · [ ]
my lab is gone! they packed it up and moved it all this morning, in anticipation of the next phase of construction (knocking down our lab walls) while I was busy writing a psychology paper. of course it was a joke when we said we lived in the lab, but only sort of. I was thinking about it and I almost certainly have spent more time in the astro research lab than I have in my own room. I've been it nearly every single day for the past year and a half. last summer, for most of which we went internetless in our un-air-conditioned apartment, I always walked back on campus after dinner, after the dishes were done, and I stayed alone in the lab until two or three in the morning, watching my email and hiding from the security guards. sometimes during the semester, when I had so much work I couldn't go home, I slept on the floor for a little while, curled up under one of the computer tables with the stuffed squid under my head. I decorated the whiteboards with erasable marker artwork. we covered a wall with post-it notes. once when we were locked out, I climbed through the window, knocking a set of books off the shelf and into the recycling bin by accident. I turned over a thousand raw data files into reduced wavelength-calibrated spectra in that lab. (and there were others, of course: between us we had data from five different telescopes, plus I think three-maybe-four different kinds of simulations.) maybe I can comfort myself a bit because now it will never happen that my spot in our lab will be filled by someone else -- there will be a whole new lab for the whole new crew of student researchers -- but I never thought it would feel so strange to stand in the middle of that empty room with all the furniture gone except a few leftover filing cabinets and the empty grey metal shelf. there were still some posters on the walls, still my doodles around the corners of the whiteboard. I've left behind a lot of empty rooms over the past four years, but the emptiness has never felt so strange. I'm glad I won't be here when the walls come down.
[ 13.5.03] · [ ]
so listen. as of this morning there are three weeks left until graduation -- is calling it commencement supposed to soften the blow? -- and I'm feeling the pressure. twenty-one days left of being a college student! the best years of our lives, though I hope that isn't true (not because they haven't been at least some of the best moments of my life, but because I don't believe in peaking).
I've stayed up all night talking to my roommate, and I've pulled countless allnighters to finish term papers, final exams, even weekly problem sets. I've gone roadtripping in big vans and little cars, watched highway signs flying by at 95 miles an hour. I've eaten pizza at five in the morning while we took a break from physics by watching a movie (a bad movie, about surfing, but that's all I remember of it). I've changed my major. I had a radio show, I read poetry in public, I've been in seventeen concerts with one to go. I've skipped seminars and fallen asleep in lecture halls. I've gone to classes I wasn't enrolled in. I hobnobbed with bigwigs and shared martinis with my professors. I've danced in full formalwear, satin and tulle brushing my ankles, and in nothing but my underwear. I failed a math test. I wrote a thesis, and I'm working on the second. I never studied abroad, but I did make it to chile, england, and spain. I've been drunk, stoned, and otherwise chemically enhanced. I know how to chug. I know how to derive the equations for shock-jump conditions in the interstellar medium. I've been an athlete, an artist, a volunteer, a research assistant, a manual-labor employee. I ran away a few times; I always came home. I walked to philadelphia, twice. I passed my swim test. I found relationships that were amazing, and disastrous, and both. I protested the war. I learned the names of dozens of trees and forgot the names of all the vice presidents. I became friends with my parents. I took care of my friends and sometimes I let them take care of me.
now what am I missing? (I'm serious. tell me. three weeks.)
[ 11.5.03] · [ ]
in the mail today I got a shiny beaded bracelet, wrapped in fabric and taped inside an envelope decorated with sparkly butterfly stickers. it's exactly the kind of thing I break my anti-jewelry rule for, and I've been wearing it since I ripped open the wrapping, rolling the iridescent beads up and down the length of my left wrist with the flat part of my right thumb. I think people who say they don't like surprises need someone to send them better mail.
[ 8.5.03] · [ ]
it's monday morning and I'm taking the 1 train uptown from penn station to columbia, carrying nothing but my wallet and my walkman. I'm floating on a suffusion of happy contentment, having spent so many hours in the company of astronomers and skyscrapers, and I'm singing to myself under the clatter and squeal of the subway. at 79th street the car empties, as if the train has exhaled, leaving a handful of us -- not even enough for a baseball team -- scattered along the row of plastic orange seats.
I'm looking at the floor, examining the grime on the linoleum, and suddenly there's this man, fat and rank and breathing hard, and he's pressing his crotch into my breast, leaning across the cool metal railing between us to grip my opposite shoulder. for some reason I look at his hand first; it's scaly and chapped along the knuckles, bright pink and swollen like there's too much flesh to fit inside his skin. his fingernails are yellow, dirty at the tips. I'm glad my shirt is between his palm and my arm.
he's wearing stained grey sweatpants, and it could be nothing more than the heat of his body but I think there's something damp soaking through to my chest. the tunnel outside the train is completely dark, the way I like it, and the door at the end of the car is ajar, so that the howl of rushing air outside is even louder than the roaring blood in my ears. I look up over the faded blue rugby shirt that's stretched tight across rolls of fat, and this man's eyes are fluttering so that all I can see are the whites. his hair is blond, thin, silky, the only thing about him that seems to be clean. he is swaying in time with the train. something is throbbing against my body, heaving, and the way it moves reminds me of a dog gagging, which suddenly seems even more repulsive than the idea that I have a stranger's erection rubbing against my ribcage.
I do not feel threatened at all. I stand up, smooth without even needing to grab on to the pole, and his hand falls away. I will not look at his body, only at his eyes, which can't seem to focus on anything. I think he's retarded, but maybe just drunk. where is 86th street?
"get away from me," I say, "or I'll scream so that everyone on this train can hear me." I still have paul simon singing in my ears, and I'm not sure how loud exactly I would have to scream, or if I wouldn't rather just start singing. I could be sailing on seizures of laughter! I walk the length of the car and open the door into the dark tunnel, into the light of the next car which is fuller and quieter, and I'm so calm. later I will be tired, I'll yell pointlessly at one of my favorite friends, I'll think about how we had two layers of fabric between us and I'll tell myself that this is nothing, nothing at all. but now I'm just calm, I'm just floating, tracing the subway lines that splay out across the map like the strings of an unraveled rainbow.
[ 6.5.03] · [ ]
today is the last day I'll put on my rugby kit here at swarthmore. it's only for the alumni game, which doesn't count for anything and is barely a real game at all, but still I'll have my ankles taped and my mouthguard in, and I'll be wearing my number nine jersey. I started playing rugby almost by accident. after playing soccer exclusively for seven year I knew I wanted to try something different, but I had actually been thinking I might make a good badminton player. but I had only been at swarthmore for a week and a half before the first organizational rugby meeting was held, and everyone else was still so freshly-arrived too that I hadn't yet had time to become afraid of being the new kid. I wore all green to the first practice, and before the veteran players learned my name they called me "green girl." "green girl! did you run track in high school?" "no -- I played soccer." "oh, well, it shows." at the end of the first practice, the forward captain poked me and told me I had to keep playing rugby. at the beginning of the second practice, the coach threw a ball at me -- they still felt huge and strange in my hands then, like bloated footballs -- and said, "scrumhalf." I didn't know what he was talking about. in the third practice, I started training to be scrumhalf. the day after that, I played in my first game, after a three-hour drive across maryland. it was the most confusing thing I'd ever seen -- people were everywhere; I kept getting clobbered just as I was ready to pass the ball; when I tackled the other players they consistently landed right on top of me; half the time I wasn't even sure which direction my teammates were running. I absolutely loved it. so I was the b-side scrumhalf.
I was also the a-side fullback. after so many years of playing wingback on the soccer team, I thought I would be ready for the pressure of being the last line of defense (number fifteen!). but in my first a-side game they kept kicking the ball over my head, I couldn't figure out when I was supposed to counterattack, and I cried at halftime. both the captains had to convince me I was good enough to keep playing in the second half.
in the second half, I tackled a girl twice my size and got a black eye in the process. I was so proud of it I couldn't stop looking in the mirror all weekend.
we were undefeated my freshman spring. the last game of the season was against princeton, ranked second in the nation behind navy. we played them at home on a rainy, sloppy april day, and we won on the very last play of the game. afterwards we slid through the mudslicks under the uprights in celebration.
we haven't had an undefeated season since then. my sophomore fall we made it to the league playoffs; the next spring we played navy in our first national tournament game. they slaughtered us. I could barely walk for the entire next week.
the team has changed a lot over the past two years. I'm the only senior left who's played single season. we're not so ferociously competitive anymore, and we win about as many games as we lose. we have moments of brilliance and moments of utter stupidity. I'm perpetually late to practice because I spend so much time working in the astro lab.
I'm still the scrumhalf. I'm number nine.
it's weird, because although the team isn't as good as it used to be, I know more about how the game works and the right way to play it than I ever did when the other teams were afraid of us. when I play rugby, I know what I'm doing. I know where I'm going. that's a feeling that can be somewhat hard to come by at swarthmore -- at least I've never felt so confident in front of a double integral as I have setting the calls for penalty plays or kicking the ball over both sets of jumping forwards after a line-out -- and I don't know what I would have done without it.
I don't know that I'm good at a lot of things. but I know, I know I can play rugby. I've never loved a sport the way I love rugby.
I sound like a stereotypical high school football jock, I know. we didn't so much have them at my high school; our football team sucked and our soccer teams were half-full of the children of harvard professors. but that's how the line goes, right? maybe I failed that algebra test, but give me a ball and I'll show you what I'm worth.
well, something like that.
I've gone through two pairs of cleats since I've been here. my right shoe is split along the seam that connects the upper to the sole, so that I have to wrap tape around it, covering all the laces, to make it stay on. I guess today is the last time I'll wear those cleats, with their bright green laces. I have two of my own rugby balls, though, and my old b-side rugby jersey that I inherited from the team when we bought new ones last spring. mine's number nine, of course. [ 3.5.03] · [ ]
I got a job. in new york city. more when I have time to think about it.
[ 2.5.03] · [ ]
about · archives · photos · linklist · contact