To make sense of it all.

To the left:

I have one of those big car-washing sponges, shaped like a figure-8 with the holes filled in. I'm holding it next to your ear and soaking up the things that come trickling out of your brain.  Slowly but surely, the sponge gets saturated and I wring it out into a bathtub.  Pretty soon, the bathtub is full. So I start to fill an empty swimming pool instead. Sponge by sponge. Squeeze by squeeze.
How far can I go?
Will your thoughts need an entire swimming pool to contain them? Something the size of one of the great lakes, maybe?
Could you fill up the basins and the trenches in the ocean?
And would it take you your entire life to do so, or maybe just a week or two?


To the right:

It doesn't matter.
If you flood the earth with thoughts about clothing catalogues, self-obsession, materialism, doubt, negativity - all you're doing is ruining the place. If you can fill a bathtub with thoughts about ways to be happy and ways to spread happy, of love and family and friendship, then you're going to end up taking the most wonderful bath anyone's ever had.

Sink or swim; regardless, you've still got to worry about what it is you're soaking in.

Run fast for your mother.

I like knowing that however inconveniently timed their presence, I can still be inspired by the little things. It makes me feel like maybe I haven't gotten too old yet. Even if twenty is creeping up on me like some sort of enticing, colorful plague. There's still some kind of six-year-old Megan in my brain, watching Gullah Gullah island and somersalting through the house.

- Your friendly neighborhood fortune cookie

Every Little Thing The Reflex Does.

If you seat a child who has recently returned from fat camp at the dining room table and fill it with cupcakes, bags of chips, and those bagged pastries you can buy at the gas station, his poor, deprived little mouth is going to suck them down faster than the speed of light.  It doesn't matter that he spent his entire summer running six miles per week or learning various forms of self-control when it comes to over-indulgence. If you push him just far enough, all of the controlling he learned to do with his mind will sink swiftly into his stomach.  And he'll feel bad afterwards.  But during? While he's swimming in a sea of the snacks he's fantasized about for four months? He'll feel oh. So. Good.

Gluttony comes in many forms. Obviously food, sex, drugs, and the like are most addressed by society because they're the most popular outlets. But there are a few secret, underground gluttons who prefer to remain less apparent.  They skulk around the vast, dusty shelves of libraries, digging for spare change in gutters so they can pay their overdue fines.  They avoid bookstores because most of their debts can be traced back to an overly enthusiastic trip to Borders.  The bookworms. The readers. Those whose relatives buy them the latest bestseller for Christmas without even asking first. They may not be outwardly harming themselves with their gluttony, but trust me. The bookworm is just as dangerous a glutton as any. And most of them were born this way - there's nothing they can do about it.

As one of the aforementioned cursed-at-birth bookworms, I experience the side-effects of my gluttony much the same way the kid with the smorgasbord of snacks would.  When I find a book that captures my imagination to the degree that part of my mind is thinking about the characters and their desires while the book is closed and on my bookshelf, I have no choice but to give it my utmost attention.  I cancel plans. I close the door to my room and don't bother talking to anyone. I neglect the cleanliness of my carpet, my laundry, my e-mail, any form of regular eating schedule - the only place I go is to class, and even then I bring the book along because it makes me feel better.  If I get too bored or stressed while I'm there, the characters will be right there next to me. It's like having a friend in my backpack.  And it feels oh. So. Good.

On the other hand, similar to the fat kid, I suck that story down at the speed of light. After about 24 to 36 hours of the inexplicably wonderful comfort of being curled up on my comforter with a book that practically stabs me with its demand to be read, it is gone.  The last page flutters closed along a few more filler pages in the back of the binding, and then the back cover slips between my fingers and the book closes itself to me.  And I can't get back in, because it's not the same anymore.  If I open it back up right away, the characters will be too tired to tell me their story quite as well. I have to let them rest.

The next phase is what I like to call the aftermath. It's when I spend the next 2 to 3 days sulking, inwardly pissed that I finished the book so quickly, but not having an adequate way to outwardly express this bizarrely fantastic frustration.  I want to slip back into the book's world - I want to feel what the book feels, I want to teleport and cast spells and fall in love and watch people die.  But I can't get back in, no matter how hard I try.  Sometimes I even open another book, hoping it will sweep me away on some new adventure so I can get over the old one.  But the new book is just a rebound.  It just makes me miss the old one all the more, and I usually throw it aside and glare at it for trying to replace something so epic.

This is the trigger to my current aftermath, and even Harry Potter couldn't heal my separation anxiety. I might write a review soon, but for the time being I just want to bask in how good I felt while I was reading it.  As a writing major, I get sucked up in the battle between literary fiction and the sort of fiction that normal people who aren't hipsters or college kids or angsty white writer men read. This one reminded me why reading is important, and why I don't care about securing a space in the VIP literary fiction lounge.  It also reminded me why I write.

Read slowly, friends.

Fish, trees, and Louis Armstrong.

Occasionally random patterns of thought will barge their way into my mind dressed up like they're going to the premiere of Gene Kelly's first feature film.  They announce themselves lavishly, then make themselves comfortable on the cushier parts of my brain.  They talk animatedly and make a lot of noise. They drink Cosmopolitans.  Louis Armstrong blows music through a trumpet in the dimly lit corner. And while they're hanging out in there, it's impossible for me to fall asleep at night. They're just too damn loud.

A significant amount of the time, I welcome their presence in there.  It's kind of flattering that they choose to come back so much - my brain must be a nice, comfortable venue.  And they're interesting company - usually they talk about things I never would've come up with on my own. I enjoy what they have to say and even agree with it most of the time.

Last night, however, they arrived just as I was on the brink of sleep after a particularly exhausting day, with their trumpeting and their drinking and all.  And as nice as they are, I really wasn't in the mood for them at that particular moment in time. I actually said out loud to my semi-darkened bedroom, "Go invade someone else's brain tonight, you guys. I'm tired." They didn't seem to hear me, but I think the chilly air that filled my room got a good chuckle out of my soliloquy.  It probably thought I was crazy.

The even more obnoxious part about their completely unannounced, inconveniently timed party was that the conversation didn't even make sense. They must have been drinking before they even got there, which is a little trashy, if truth be told. (They usually have more class than that).  All they kept saying was, "Did you ever think about how ridiculously awesome the world is?"

I flatly told them no, I hadn't, and I didn't really think this was a good time to start.  They giggled and kept repeating that same phrase, louder and louder until I couldn't distinguish their shouts from the buses charging past my window.  "THE WORLD IS SO COOL, THOUGH!! ISN'T IT!?"

"I don't really know what the crap you're talking about," I finally had to reply in the best imitation of a furiously angry person I could muster in my particular state of consciousness.

So they said, "Oh! We'll show you."  And they pulled out a projection screen and a teeny little brain-sized version of Chaz, my darling MacBook, and they proceeded to play me a slide show. If you were in my room at that moment in time, I bet you could have seen the colors from the projection screen reflecting out of my eyes and making little rainbows on my ceiling. Stepford Wives-style. Granted, these aren't the exact images they had, but they'll give you a pretty solid idea:

(Credit for the last photo goes to Marilyn Harris, but as for the others, I found them on StumbleUpon and saved them to my computer because they looked cool. So if you have any idea who took them, feel free to let me know). :)

Once the slideshow ended, the partygoers packed up their stuff and left me at peace. But their words rang in my head, and I couldn't think of a better way to put things.  I still can't, which is why I turned to pictures. (As much as I love words, sometimes they just don't work).

Honestly, though, THINK about it. Just take a second or two next time you're outside and look around you.  Trees survive a bajillion times longer than we do, and they don't even move. They find food right where they are, and it's enough to satisfy them for their whole lives. And the atmosphere - it's just freaking hanging out up there, holding everything in. It's doing all kinds of stuff for you even when you can't see it. And there's these huge, massive bodies of water - so massive we can't even comprehend them. There's another entire universe and way of life in there - we all coexist in the same area of space, but we really don't know anything about each other because they can't survive out here and we can't survive in there. And there are deserts, and big huge chunks of ice, and...fish! And here we are, worried about degrees and programs and jobs and internships, when the whole world is always out there just being awesome. And we never even think about it. The world is really just SO cool.

And don't even get me started on the moon and stars and stuff.

Food for thought.

stand with your lover on the ending earth-

and while a(huge which by huger than
huge)whoing sea leaps to greenly hurl snow

suppose we could not love,dear;imagine

ourselves like living neither nor dead these
(or many thousand hearts which don't and dream
or many million minds which sleep and move)
blind sands,at pitiless the mercy of

time time time time time

-how fortunate are you and i, whose home
is timelessness:we who have wandered down
from fragrant mountains of eternal now

to frolic in such mysteries as birth
and death in a day(or maybe even less)

- my favorite poet ever
(e.e. Cummings, 95 poems)

5 People You Should Know (And Love)

I couldn’t fall asleep last night because my dad’s snoring sounded like a giant industrial machine coming to kill me and my family, it was raining, and random thoughts and vague fantasies were exploding in my head like schizophrenic fireworks.

So I shut my eyes and tried to drift off happily into a world of dreams. I’ve heard that the harder you focus on falling asleep, the harder it is to actually fall asleep. To distract myself, I decided to think of all the people in the world that I’d like to meet.

In my brain, these people paraded themselves in front of me in a form of competition that was a bit like “Survivor” mixed with “America’s Next Top Model”. What follows is a list of the people who won in my imagination. I have put them here because everyone should know and love these people, not only because all of them look good in Anna Sui, but also because they are incredibly talented.

1. Louise Rennison, the evil genius/mastermind behind the Georgia Nicholson diaries. She practically created her own language filled with words and phrases like “boy entrancers”, “nuddy-pants”, and “double cool with knobs”. Through all of her hilariousness, she’s always insightful and makes those of us who are probably clinically insane feel a little better.

2. Chris Colfer, the actor who portrays the adorable Kurt Hummel on Ryan Murphy’s “Glee”. He’s a good role model because his character is strong but relatable, and Colfer is a believable actor. His fashion sense is top-notch. In all of the interviews that I’ve seen with him, he seems poised and sincerely sweet.

3. Ellen DeGeneres, who voiced Dory in “Finding Nemo” and is a warm and friendly talk-show host. I feel like I know her personally. She has written books that are filled with laugh-out-loud funny-ness, and her TV show brightens the most dismal of mornings.

4. Javier Bardem. Sex God extraordinaire with a gorgey accent.

5. Michael Cera, who has his roots in Arrested Development. He is as cute as a button but he’s capable of playing a jackass.

The runners-up include: 1. Jane Austen, the brilliant woman behind six nearly perfect novels that I’ve read at least twice each; 2. Oscar Wilde, pretty much because he’s Oscar Wilde. I don’t care if he was gay. If I could go back in time, I would spend all of my time trying to seduce him; 3. Robin Hood, because he stole from the rich and gave to the poor. Duh. 4. Shonda Rhimes, the writer of my favorite TV show. I think I would actually eat a hot dog if it meant I could be on "Grey's Anatomy".

Something I wrote nine months ago and never posted because I thought it was stupid, but now I think it's actually pretty good, considering.

"Sometimes there's airplanes I can't jump out
Sometimes there's bullshit that don't work now
We all got our stories, but please tell me
What there is to complain about."
- Good Life, OneRepublic

It just takes some time.


Since I've been revoltingly sparse on the writing front these past three months, allow me to provide a general idea of what's been choking my sanity:
Way down, back up, plateau, stop this train, brick wall, way down, back up, gobble gobble.

I knew everything would change once people left for college - in the back of my mind, I really did. But I didn't expect the change to be so instantaneously obvious. I figured it would be gradual - we'd all make new friends, start to care about other things, and eventually forget about high school. But until now, we've all been more-or-less on the same pattern at the same speed. Nobody really got so far ahead you couldn't see them anymore, and no one got stuck in the dust, because the only dust there was to get stuck in was middle school. (Less mature dust than what we were in during high school, but still pretty much the same dust). When college started, some people took off, some people stayed in the same place, and some people are still hanging out in the ambiguous middle-area, wondering where they belong.

"The moon is shining now and shadows are what's left of all the noise,
simple silhouettes and cut-outs, as if we had the choice."

Hi. I'm Megan, and I'll be your tour guide for the popular middle-area. The area where "..." is an expertly descriptive sentence, and gray is the new black. I can't think of anyone more qualified to give you a tour of what floating around in ambiguity feels like right now, though there are probably a handful of people out there who are. But all the same, I've done a lot of floating, and a lot of thinking. More thinking than I probably should have. And here is what I realized:

..

...


Yup. That. Nothing.
I realized that I know nothing.

The stupidest things I've ever done.

1. Ate two large bowls of Chocolate Moose Tracks (a la my feelings) with generous gobs of Jif peanut butter swirled in. And that was just last night.
2. Said, "Hey, three-year-old girl, do you want to play with paints?"
3. Assumed any part of me would ever be capable of using a Wii. That stuff is just not compatible with my level of coordination. Rainbow Road was a terrible, terrible tragedy.
4. Told myself it would be a good idea to call Jesse McCartney's fan voice mail gizmo with two friends, tell him we were in college, and giggle like eleventeen-year-olds. Good story, but still embarrassing.
5. Watched The Ring.
6. Asked a short man with a mustache if he wanted a kids' menu.
7. Thought, "I can take 8:30 classes every day next semester. I'll get used to it."
8. Stared at a bell pepper plant for a few minutes asking myself why the tomatoes were shaped so weird.
9. Washed a few plates with laundry detergent because I was too lazy to go get the dish soap. (It made things taste funny).
10. Dropped a fork on a baby while busing tables.
11. Watched a cat eat pizza off a plate for a good three minutes before realization kicked in that I should probably prevent it from doing that.
12. Woke up and immediately decided my left eye had gotten five hours of sleep, while my right had gotten six. And didn't realize what was wrong with that thought until half an hour later.
13. Tried to find fireworks on the Fourth of July. (Seriously, just go to the city. Because NOBODY ELSE has them).
14. To be continued. Trust me.

Black Death

Responsibility (n) - that from which Amy flees like the plague.


I suppose that, sometimes, the need to be responsible just attacks you.

Example a: One morning, a giant bearded wizard informs you that you are in possession of the ring that will decide the fate of the earth. You can't give the ring away, you can't just chuck it in a river, and you can't even melt it down into nothing in your ordinary fire. You have no choice unless you want the whole world to go to hell in a hand basket.






You have to saddle up, take responsibility for your god-awful luck, and head out to Mount Doom to destroy that evil power forever. If you fail, you might as well be dead...and the rest of the good world along with you.

Sometimes, people take up responsibility on their own.

Example b: McDreamy decided one day to become a kickass doctor and save lives. Now he is responsible (by his own choice) for his patients and those annoying interns studying under him.




Then, there are people like me who run away from responsibility like a loon.

For the fall semester at Pitt, I had enrolled in a teaching class that required observational field experience. In order to do that, the state mandates that students in this class get a number of clearances so they don’t infect the children with TB or molest them on their lunch break. Fair enough.

But could I do it? Could I call to make a doctor’s appointment to get a TB shot? Could I go down to the UPS store to get fingerprinted and prove that I’m not a raving, homicidal, child-molesting crazy person? No. No, I couldn’t it. Because doing so wouldn’t have shown that I was responsible, that I could get stuff done without being poked and prodded incessantly by a higher power, that I could do things on my own.

But, instead of gritting my teeth and being responsible, I dropped the class after a month of debating with myself.

I don’t know what my calling is. I certainly haven’t figured out what I’m good at or what I want to do with the rest of my life, but teaching clearly isn’t for me. Saving the world from doom and destruction by dropping a ring of power into a volcano-esque mountain thing probably isn't for me, either. But you never know.

Three babies and a basket case.

I have decided I've had enough with this "Myehh, I wanna write things but everything I say is stupid!" crap that goes through my head every day. The whole point is just to write things. Who cares if it's any good? It's better than not writing anything, which is the strategy I used a lot of this past year, and look where that got me. Nowheresville, Ohio. That's where.

So that's the new decision. Here is what happened to me today. (I've decided this story is best depicted partially though illustration).

Twice a week I babysit this collection of objects from 7am til about 5 in the evening.

 

Today's situation, however, was a little bit worse than usual. (Not that the situation is usually bad at all - I should clarify before I veer off on this rant that I love this family. They're sweet). The enjoyable teens were off at band camp and a random aunt had dropped off her insane puppy for the week. So essentially I was watching three toddlers by myself. Not particularly fun, but doable. Or so I believed. The day started out okay.

The spunky 3-year-old ripped off her clothes and demanded that I set up the sprinkler, which I did while carrying a dripping baby who refused to be set down for even a second without screeching unpleasantly. I thought to myself, "Okay, well this is going to be a long day. But I can do this."

After about two minutes in the sprinkler, Spunky announced that she was hungry and darted into the house. So, sighing heavily, I followed her inside, still carrying the baby. By the time I got into the kitchen (which was really only about twenty seconds later), she had already helped herself to a popsicle and was contentedly sucking on it. I thought about starting an argument over it, but all I did was ask, "So are you done in the sprinkler, then?" She nodded. So I set the screaming baby down, told Spunky to stay inside and leave all the doors shut, and went to turn off the hose.
This was my fatal mistake.
No sooner had I made it down the back steps to the yard than Spunky slid the doors open and screamed "MEGAN! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?" And the most hyper little white blur I'd ever seen sped past her, down the steps, and straight under the neighbors' car.

Spunky helpfully called, "Megan, the dog got out!" to which I replied "GO INSIDE AND SHUT THE DOOR!" (Here, you have to understand that I'm usually not a screamer. I can be very patient when I need to, and I tend to skip over outright anger altogether and just take everything personally. But at this point, my thoughts consisted mostly of repressed obscenities). The dog, who I'd actually thought was cute and lovable yesterday, turned out to be a big huge jerk. It thought I was playing with it. It would jump out from behind things and flash past me, and then stop just out of reach and look really happy with itself. And I would look at it and say pleasantly, "I'm not playing games. I will kill you."

As I was busy chasing the giant cotton ball around the yard, I didn't immediately notice the sound of the door sliding open again. It wasn't until I heard Spunky yell, "Megan! The baby got out!" that I stopped in my tracks and turned my back on the dog. At that point, the thing could have been abducted by a UFO and sucked into outer space and I wouldn't have cared; I didn't even bother to keep an eye on where it was going. I charged up the stairs and caught the baby just as it was contemplating throwing itself down them. For whatever reason.

I snatched the baby from its imminent serious injury and carried it inside. (It started crying, of course). I grabbed Spunky by the wrist and pulled her inside, too. And I said "LISTEN. If you open this door again, the baby is going to fall down the stairs and die, and you are going to be in BIG TROUBLE." And Spunky said "Kay!" and slid the door shut in my face.
I turned around and descended the stairs with much less vigor than I had climbed them.
And this is what the stupid jerk dog was doing.

Let's celebrate being alive.

Because, let's face it - some people aren't.

Anyone who has known me for upwards of five minutes can tell you I like to invest my emotions in things. Give me a good Disney movie, a moderately well-written chick flick starring Hilary Duff or Amanda Bynes circa 2002, or just a heartfelt cardboard Valentine, and watch the waterworks begin.

But then sometimes when real stuff happens - like the death of someone who meant something to my life- I don't really react like I think I should.  I put on some music and stare at the ceiling and wait for suffocation to embrace me. But it doesn't. I just lie there and think about how small and breakable I am, and how the blood in my veins and the air moving in and out of me all the time is such a miracle that I never, ever appreciate.

I don't want this post to be about me. Because it's not. And I don't want it to be about how you should seize the day because very rarely in life are there ever second chances. Because you can go see Charlie St. Cloud if you want that rubbed in your face for a few hours. (However, Zac Efron is dreamy, so go see it anyway). I ALSO don't want all of my posts to be this emotionally-invested. Because as I said before, that's how I've been since I was eleven, and I'm trying to find a way to balance that. But it's been an emotionally-invested evening. So you'll have to forgive me this time.

I want this to be about how we're all human beings, and how every second of every day there are lights turning on and off on this huge planet. Hundreds, even thousands of people dying, and even more being born. Every minute. And somehow, we've been standing here for years. Through the mess of all these lights flicking on and off, day and night - somehow, we've managed to keep ours on. Constantly. And there's no rhyme or reason to it. But here we are. We're alive.

We have no idea how lucky we are.

Inception

Consider my mind blown.

I've seen this movie twice
already and I still don't know exactly what happened. I mean, I do,
but I don't. It was really smart for being a movie with a ton of
action. Usually the two don't go together.

The
combination of intelligence and things blowing up/people being shot/car
chases would probably be enough to impress me. But add in Joseph
Gordon-Levitt (a sort of geeky-chic hottie) floating around in a world
without gravity and fighting with projections of people, Ellen Page being
Ellen Page-y, and some witty dialogue and - BAM! - I'm sold, not to
mention the layered and complexly patterned wardrobes, funny accents, and
the ending that caused me to have a physical reaction (which very nearly
included me shouting things at the screen).

I haven't been this
engrossed in a movie for a long time. I came out of the theater
wanting to talk about it for hours on end. At first, my
companions were just as into it as I was. But after a while, when
pleasant silences had just settled only to be interrupted by my sudden
exclamation of "AND! Did you see the part where she completely defied
the laws of physics?!!?!", people started getting annoyed. They
were like, "Yeah, we saw that part, we watched the movie with
you."

But I couldn't help it. I thought that the
more I talked about it, the more I would understand. Of course, I
was wrong.

Maybe if I write a blog post about it...

**UPDATE**

Yeah, so I just found out that the crazy intense musical score is just Edith Piaf's "Non, je ne regrette rien" (the song used for the countdown in the movie while in dreams) slowed down. In case I had been blown away before, now I really really really am. Really.

Hello, internet world!

Welcome to one of those blog things! You've probably read like at least ten or fifteen of them before, this being the digital age and the internet being an outlet for boredom and all that. I hope you'll like this one, though. Maybe even more than some of the other ones. Not that I really know where it's going to go, other than it's probably going to be about sporadic life events through the eyes of a couple awkward college chicks. But that can be fun to learn about, in my opinion.

I'm also going to probably get all deep at times, since that's what I do. But this is going to be kind of an experiment to see if I can be deep AND funny. Or at least somewhat amusing. I've never really tried both at once. I'll let you know how it turns out.

Excellent. Well, I just wanted to say hi. And welcome to this currently blank space of web that I'm pretty excited to fill with useless rambling for the inhabitants of the internet.

Love,
Megan