she said that her life story was happening faster than her life

my day so far. 5th grade watches annie. they say "ew" at the romantic parts and sing along to the songs they know. 3rd grade rehearses their hindi song for the indian celebration of holi. we work on keeping a steady beat with our instruments. we talk about the assembly and what we should do if we get nervous. i eat school lunch. a hotdog i have to heat up in the microwave because it's ice cold. 1st grade practices magic penny. love IS something if you give it away. we're singing to the elderly residents at senior suites soon. i pop in our irish song and the kids do a jig. kindergarten sings a few songs on the carpet - a song called safety first, which always makes me laugh, don't worry be happy, and a hannah montana song before we say goodbye. i pound my heels over to upper school. i'm on my way to 7th grade. if i said i wasn't nervous going there anymore i'd be lying. inside myself, i'm stacking my wall with bricks - i build up my energy and put on my armor. they're not so bad today. most of them finish their mood drawings for the theme from swan lake. i tell keandre to stop looking at pictures of women in swimsuits on the computer and draw his scene. i make some threats (if you don't finish, you won't get to bring your favorite music in on monday - you'll be in the principal's office finishing this project), i collect papers, i roll out.

i sit down.

is the day over yet?

extremely loud and incredibly close is one of my favorite books ever. it's intimacy. real, human intimacy. train of thought is authentic and very fluid. characters are likeable and the situation is real enough to believe but new enough to keep the reader involved. love is touchable - it's THERE. it's not fluffy. it's not plastic, storybook love. it's love between older people whose bodies are small and wrinkled and scarred. love for impressive strangers. love for ideas and for the world. the story foer's written is beautiful, but what i'll remember the most is the feeling. when i finished the book i didn't want the feeling to go away. the title is fitting. it's life and emotion magnified. extremely, incredibly. 4 stars (out of 4).

3 cups of tea is less easy to get through. names and places are pakistani and i get too caught up trying to remember them all that i lose the story. i reread every paragraph. the flow isn't its strong point. the writing isn't either. it's more the incredibly selfless story of greg mortenson and the school he's building. i'm determined to make it through, but it's difficult. so far, 2 stars.

now is the day over? i must enter grades. until next time.

once more, with feeling

a successful transition from upper case to lower case in the blog. tiny victories.

the pars cove family was out on saturday night for mahboobeh's birthday party (stay tuned for pictures). mahboobeh's new boyfriend is very sweet and he's becoming a doctor. i'm so happy for her. i might go back to work at pars cove a few nights a week for some extra change. will might too. wedding money. one of will's friends acted dumb that night. i felt bad because will does so much for his friends and he's such a good person. he reminded me how great my pars cove friends are to me and how much they love me. when i moved to chicago they pulled me into their group and always treated me well. i'm lucky to have met them.

crazy cristy was on intervention again on tuesday. the craziest of the crazy, she is. her family must wear very heavy boots having to love her every day. i think if people still love cristy, then everyone in the whole world must be loveable, because she's the worst. i decided when i was watching that it might be possible for me to stop loving someone if they became like her. she's not like anyone else i've ever seen. she doesn't even try. i remember when i saw a picture of someone's brain after she had been taking ecstasy for years and how it looked like swiss cheese. i think cristy's might be more like cotton candy after all the meth she's done. mostly air, delicate fuzz and strings of matter. and before u know it, she's somebody else. i would feel a little bad for it, but i wouldn't love her or do things for her anymore. i wouldn't sit in her intervention, and i wouldn't fight for her. i wonder what she's doing right now.

nevermind. i'm over it.

isat haiku

isat drudgery
bubble sheets & number twos
education stops

on books

having read this book, i suddenly feel extra self-conscious about sounding cliche, uneducated, trite, boring, stereotypical, etc. but then maybe i'm missing the point. one review calls this memoir a "shocking assault on our hipper than thou age of smart-ass irony." he's found the ideas that have been bouncing around in my head since, oh, late high school. ones that have bothered me, but that i've always assumed very few other people even bother wasting their time with.

hipper than thou. i've met a lot of these (almost self-proclaimed) "hip" people. first i feel jealous. they know who they are (maybe?) and their inner self is reflected outwardly at all times. if there's a cynical, well-read way to do your makeup each day, they do it. if there's an i-can't-listen-to-music-considered-popular way to dress, they dress that way. and i believe where the irony comes in (or is it hypocrisy?) is where you start to see people trying desperately to avoid looking like they're trying to fit into a crowd and ending up fitting (like a key into its perfect keyhole) into a separate but totally monochromatic group. do you see what i mean?

eggers is certainly cynical, and very worried about seeming too much like the average white suburbanite coming of age. he struggles with raising his younger brother after his parents die, and has a hard time deciding exactly who he is. sometimes it seems like he's pretty sure, and then he begins these arguments with himself that prove otherwise. he manipulates the way the reader feels by manipulating the way he's typed everything out. long and short sentences. total train-of-thought writing at times. i loved reading it, but felt the most meaningful parts were closer to the end in terms of why is he writing this? what am i supposed to get from this? what do i choose to get from this?

out of 4 possible points (like we do at bookclub, and no one seems to give anything a 4) i'd give it a 3, averaging the 4 i'd give him for style and a 2 for the story itself and its characters.

i'm so in love with my new book, extremely loud & incredibly close by jonathan safran foer. i'll discuss it here once i'm further in. i'll just say i love it very much, and i hope at least one book clubber agrees so we can talk about it endlessly. i acknowledge the possibility of it being too different or too artsy, remember the faces friends have made when i try to make them watch my favorite indie films.

example - the squid and the whale.

friend who watches mostly blockbusters: why is he smearing his.. stuff all over those library books?
me giving it my best try: well he's so sad, and he feels abandoned by his parents, don't you think?
friend: [confused look -- or, worse yet, the 'you're crazy' look.]
me: haven't you ever heard of victims of abuse smearing their feces on bathroom walls and whatnot? once at school ... nevermind. just don't worry about it.)

i digress. so, i'm hoping i haven't totally alienated myself from this book club by talking the ladies into this book. because i love it so much, but it's not typical. which is why i love it so much. it's art. art should never be typical. once art becomes typical, overdone, overworked, over-assimilated, it becomes a product.

art should never be typical.

petals are soft and life is hard

paula dean uses the same sounding word, all stretched like taffy, for three things: boil, bowl, and ball. sometimes i wonder if her drawl is real. i imagine the ceo of food network, probably in a suit, a coffee stain on his tie, sitting down with his people in a room. let's find an older woman. she could be your grandma, your aunt, your best friend. and she's southern, and she makes comfort food. well, we have this woman, paula dean, waiting in the wings, but her accent isn't strong enough. and i think she's actually from southern illinois. bring her in, and have a vocal coach here by noon. oh, and get that don budge fellow if he's available.

our officiant reminds me of paula dean. she's older and has a drawl. she's very kind. she sings to her dog, and he sings back and his name is josh. josh. we loved what she had written for the ceremony.

we made our invitations, too. simple and clean and reminiscent of everything else we've pulled together for the wedding.

kids are testing today. it's been a year since i blogged the entry with the picture of the pencil next to it. crazy.

i'm trying to (finally) finish a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. eggers is a young adult, my age, trying to make sense of his life. he's cynical and has an intense vocabulary. his sentences are sometimes two words long, sometimes two pages. his life is both boring and difficult. my early 20s has been the hardest part of my life thus far. i realize now that college kids are still kids and essentially still being taken care of. then you have to take your degree and walk somewhere with confidence. when you wander, people feel bad for you, but that's not what you want. you start to think of your age and cringe. i'm old now. the line drawn between childhood and adulthood is behind me. i'm supposed to know what i'm doing. anything that could be written into a basic, mindless autobiography might show that i do know what i'm doing. but what i mean by all of this is that i'm trying to figure out who i am. i'm trying to get to the bottom of it, past the grabbing hands (remember labyrinth? when she falls through the hands?) without them affecting me. they can touch me, but that's all. i hit the bottom and i'm still myself. this is my plan.