Cinco

         I am currently typing from an air mattress, which to my disdain has been strategically positioned beside the bed of my beloved brother. You see, Connor has this problem... And when I say "problem", I'm actually referring to his evil plot to make me mentally insane by the time I leave my parents home after the holiday weekend. I am quite convinced that he had himself trained in the art of night terror performances before I arrived, so as to not fail in his great plan of demise.
        Every night after I use my go go gadget arm to switch off the bedroom light, I think to myself, "Great. Fifteen minutes till the one man marching band releases his mighty wrath of fury on my beauty sleep." And sure enough, the moment his breathing softens to a steady open mouth snore, I brace myself for the nightmare that awaits me not in my sleep but in my awakened state of anxious insomnia. I pull the covers up under my chin and begin my ritual restless leg syndrome. I do this as a useless attempt to bring about that deep sleep you can only hope for while trying to avoid consciousness before the detonation of a bomb. Someone say a prayer for me please.



Cuatro

Today I just have photos from work. Mrs. Frizzle and her estudiantes. I LOVE my job, and I LOVE Halloween.

                                                      

Tres

According to the news, this is an unlucky week for the fishermen of Indonesia. They are statistically rated as having had the highest number of fatalities in the recent tsunami disaster. I felt their sad story rolling around my head all morning on campus, like the last lonely orange in an empty fruit crate. This morning in class we discussed the Nobel Prize winning novel, One Hundred Years of Solitude, by Gabriel Màrquez. I was completely distracted by the level of descriptive ingenuity that this man possessed and so amidst the class's arguing and the Indonesian fishermen, I found myself entirely unable to focus on the general topic. I put my head down and began losing myself in rereading pages that I'd already covered the night before. All of a sudden, my mind latched onto one passage in particular,  and my eyes kept tracing over it again and again like a broken record.

"Instead of going around thinking about your crazy inventions you should be worrying about your sons," she replied, "Look at the state they're in, running wild just like donkeys."

Josè Arcadio Buendìa took his wife's words literally. He looked out the window and saw the barefoot children in the sunny garden and he had the impression that only at that instant had they begun to exist...Something occurred inside of him then, something mysterious and definitive that uprooted him from his own time and carried him adrift through an unexplored region of his memory. While Urusla continued sweeping the house, he stood there with an absorbed look, contemplating the children until his eyes became moist and he dried them with the back of his hand, exhaling a deep sigh of resignation."

I felt like my heart was beating with the same rhythmic thumping as that of Josè Arcadio Buendìa, as he suddenly awoke to find himself surrounded by the repercussions of neglect and distraction. I felt a  sting of empathy spark inside me. I wondered if that is how those fishermen felt. I pictured myself behind the eyes of one of those poor Indonesian men, doing an honest days labor of faithful casting. When without warning, their blind daydreaming suddenly morphs into panic stricken searches for safety as they realize that the fastly approaching wave will soon be the caboose of their reality.

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So now it is no longer Wednesday, it is Tuesdays with Morrie or more well put, Thursdays with Meow. Every Thursday my little chinese friend Meow waits for me at the bottom of the ST staircase with a ham and cheese sandwich and lemonade. I've asked her to stop bringing me food and she always replies by saying, "But Megan you no have time fo lunch on thusday. I like to do service fo you and bwing you sandwich." She always sneaks in small little gifts from china like a homemade handkerchief or a silver fish bracelet. Today Bryce was with me when she caught up with us after class. I introduced them as we chatted and crossed campus. I spent a few seconds fishing around in my backpack and then shoved a freshly picked Farmington pumpkin into her hands. I smiled while remembering that this is her very first Halloween. She probably attributed no particular significance to that orange gourd, but shouted thank you anyway with an added awkward side hug. Bryce told me later on that afternoon that he thinks she and I have the strangest relationship he has ever seen. Every time we see one another it's like a traditional Indian pow wow. For example, she recently returned from a short trip to Yellowstone and brought me back a souvenir. It's a fantastically huge necklace that says, "Megan, Princess" on it. So good! I'm not quite sure how our friendship transpired into this, but neither of us are complaining.

  

Dos

               Sometimes when I walk I like to clear my mind and insert a blank sheet of paper. I imagine words being written across it in dark black ink as I try to form descriptions of my life and scenery at hand. It is as if I'm constantly invested in writing a book that won't ever be published as it will only be retained momentarily in that deep black space between my short term and long term memory. When I picture that space, I see all my wonderful short term memories swimming violently upstream like loyal salmon, but so few will ever reach that land of long term where they can be reflected upon and never lost.  Am I the only one that wishes my mind was laid out in wordperfect format where I could alter, save, and remove things as wished? At times I swear I can hear a typewriter clicking...

             This morning on my way to the anthropology building I found myself criss crossing through trees that resembled crooked black hands belonging to long deceased witches; the tips of which appeared to be wet with dripping honey. The contrast between fall leaves and grey skies left me feeling slightly spooked, as if my morning was being silently narrated into a Ray Bradburry novel. The cold gave my fingers a sensation of stubby frozen hot dogs, so I picked up the pace, hoping that by chance my theory classroom would be slightly less arctic. I was wrong. If the room would have been one degree colder, our breath would have been visible and our toes blackened by frostbite. We watched a film called Can Dialectic Break Bricks? It was a black and white japanese film translated into french with english subtitles. Needless to say, I found that there was a possible break between the interpretation and original intention. The film depicted a japanese community split into two groups representing bureaucrats vs. proletarians. The storyline was obviously a spoof on the original, and I felt like I was participating in a very profound science theater 3000. I guess you could say I took as many notes as possible but didn't feel a desire to ask where it could be purchased for personal obtainment of unlimited viewing.
             
            I spent the following hour seated in front of an enormous window facing campus in the union building. I watched the rain clouds tuck our summer sky into bed, and reassure it that winter is on its way. I can't wait to see the snow again. I've been away for the past two winters and felt the deprivation of its absence. I don't know if I enjoy the snow for its fond nostalgia, or the gloominess that sometimes I find myself delighting in. Is it bad to enjoy being gloomy? That almost sounds like an oxymoron. It's only on occasion that I feel like that, but when it comes, I feel it consume me. I find crying worth evoking. Maybe that's why I read novels that pull me along by an emotional noose, or prefer an umbrella over sunscreen. I don't believe myself to be a sad person, but it's definitely a side I like to preserve. Well, I'm off to work where my social circle consists of seven year olds who love speaking to me through code. AKA armpit farting and belly buttons. Life is wonderful and I find excitement and anticipation in this changing of season.

Uno.

             This is my very first time bloohogging. It seems odd, and I don't know how I feel about recording my thoughts on something called a "blog". If I was conversing with Saussure over a kettle of jamaican redbush, I'd begrudgingly admit to him that my signifier for the word "blog" would most definitely be an acoustic image of a blue hog playing lincon logs. Maybe blogs were big before my mission but I definitely was not aware of them. Alas, I forcefully retire myself to the universe of avid bloggers and bare my soul to the pleasant spectacle of cyber space.

            Today while crossing campus I heard a bicycle quickly coming up beside me. After a couple of months I've found myself with the superhuman strength of being able to detect what mobile object is fastly approaching me from behind; scooter, bicycle, golf cart, skateboarder etc etc. Hopefully the day that one of them finally runs me over it'll only be a ninety pound asian with her foot riding the brake of a relatively less threatening childs scooter. Anyway, so as this blonde boy passes me peddling like a maniac on his bike I noticed a book sticking out of his backpack with the title MUSLIMS written larger than life in yellow lettering that resembled the mustard I'd drowned my frankfurter in at a German restaurant only a few days prior. I don't know why, but it made me laugh uncomfortably. Isn't it interesting how obsessed we are with figuring one another out? We spend hours reading, researching and trying to find some theory that can explain to us why one persons idea of normality is so different from our own. We are all written into the same book of life, but we are all so far from being on the same page; and this makes us mad with curiosity. And even though we know that curiosity killed the cat we are determined to follow him six feet under in order to explain the unexplainable. 

             So as I continued on my brisk morning walk with that giant yellow MUSLIMS tattooed to my memory bank I reflected back on a scene from Stepford Wives where all the women are discussing Christmas decorations but then reassuringly turn to Bette Midler and say,"Don't worry Bobby, we brought some Hanukkah suggestions just for you!" She sarcastically replies with, "Oh that sounds lovely. Maybe I can take some pinecones and spell out BIG JEW across my front lawn!" Labels can be so humorous and misleading. Nevertheless we read books with titles like "MUSLIMS" and think that we are digesting truths that make us justified in categorizing and classifying. If that book would have been titled, "MEGANS" I would have probably stopped the toe head right in his tracks and asked who the author was, and what kind of expertise he thought he had to write a book on me. How accurate was it? And would the audience of that book then have some generalized, concrete opinions on who I was simply because my name is Megan? I'm actually just making a big deal out of nothing but that's what I was thinking about all the way to International Pop Lit this morning........