Saturday, June 11, 2005
Homestretch
Sadie left this morning. Very, very early this morning. I woke up at 3:15am to walk her to the bus stop. We had a lovely dinner of essentially wine, bread and cheese at our favorite spot, Caffe Cagliostro/Enoteca/Il Taverna di Bacco, the nexus of Dublin's geometrically growing Italian population. Since it's on the way to college, we pass it nearly every day, and keep track of the staff, who are astonishingly gorgeous, to a one. I'm hopelessly in love with this one waitress, but there's a new one who's begun rivalling her for my affections. She doesn't have quite the stylish flair of the first one (who rocks the shawl over a t-shirt like nobody's business), nor her swaying carriage, nor her Caravaggio face, but she has the most perfect skin tone I've ever seen. I can't really describe it--like warm mahogany? Too dark. Her skin more sounds like warm mahogany than it looks like it. The thing about it is, from afar, she looks pleasing, but not phenomenal. But she's like a Monet in reverse: the closer you come, the more fascinating her small features become. One is inspired to come closer, look deeper. It's a different kind of beauty, really, from Shawl's, whose face and physique is sublime, arresting. This is kinetic, drawing you in. I'm not going to make a choice, though. There's enough of me to go around.
Sadie's favorite is a horse of another color entirely. Credit where it's due: she did effectively discover this place last year, before it became overrun with the young and upwardly mobile Dubliners. She's been going religiously for a year, now, and has gained regular status. Her favorite was this guy with a red faux-hawk, a skintight Fellini t-shirt, and the most dignified yet extravagantly gay demeanor. The word for him, I finally realized last night, was "arch." He's a legend. A few months back, she started talking to him. She told him what she was doing here etc., and his response to most of her comments was, with a glorious Italian accent, "yes, I think so." Which subsequently became his name. Yes I Think So (aka The Human Torch; after seeing the preview for the Fantastic Four, we assigned the staff at Cagliostro corresponding superpowers. The owner was Mr. Fantastico, my own personal Dulcinea was Invisible Girl, and Yes I Think So was, of course, the Torch. Flame on! The Thing was the one unattractive guy, a dopey, slow Italian who's probably someone's retarded nephew, and who we caught picking his nose at a table. We don't have anything against the Thing per se, but this guy is suitably grotesque) was a staple of conversation in our apartment, and Sadie was utterly distraught at the thought that he might not be there when she got back. He was there last night, but she didn't get to say goodbye. It was terribly sad.
There have been two spots of bonheur, though. One, which I don't think I mentioned, is that Sadie will be in New York for about six weeks this summer, studying Greek at Columbia. Very exciting. The other, which I wrote a big old hairy blog about yesterday, and which the TCD network subsequently devoured (I hate, hate, HATE it when that happens), is that my mother finally extracted an answer from Chicago.
Effectively the entire course of my life was irrevocably altered two days ago. I wasn't surprised, really; that they could so casually turn around and say Actually, ha ha, no, sorry, not this time, sonny--yes, that exercised me a little. But the fact is, they might be right. It wasn't my fault, so far as I can gather. My grades have soared since the first acceptance (I have nearly an A average this year); there's no way that this time around I didn't meet the standards of adequacy I obviously exceeded two years ago. That just defies all reason. What we think it is is that Trinity drove in one final screw. Not intentionally, I suppose, but still. As it turned out, we think, having taken twenty English courses in two years would virtually eradicate my requirement as an English major, and I would have been largely relegated to core courses, specifically math and science, and the fact is that I would have barely staggered through those classes, and probably failed them. I honestly have no idea what a cosine is anymore, nor what a vertex is. I can scarcely do long division. I would have killed myself for two years, doing subjects I had no interest in at a level I was not equal to. I would have been satisfied with Chicago, I think, and stimulated, but not exactly happy. And I am very happy about what I get to do now.
I will be in New York all year (barring a summer-fall vacation of indeterminate length, during which I'll go pretty much around the world, visiting everyone doing years abroad). I'll work full-time, get brutal at my job. Pay no expenses, amass tons of cash. Hang out at Columbia (Nick, Jonah, I'm keeping changes of clothes at your dorms, and probably a cot, too), take classes there and at the New School. Sporadic, casual junkets to Philly, Boston, etc. Start a novel, start submitting work (publication considerably helps my chances of getting into college again). Try and cultivate a network of literary persons, akin to the musical webs Mom and Jacob have been spinning for years. Party with the family, and best of all, see Jacob through his senior year (I can't begin to say how excited I am). Learn self-discipline. Do only what I want, when I want to. I have this colossal blank canvas now. Time to learn to paint for real.
There's a speech from Book VI of the Faerie Queen that I loved so much I memorized (every exam I have taken so far has been marked by at least one extended, memorized block quote), and then quoted in full on an exam:
But where ye ended haue, now I begin
To tread an endlesse trace withouten guyde,
Or good direction, or how to enter in,
Or how to issue forth in waies untryed,
In perils straunge, in labours long and wide,
In which although good Fortune me befall
Yet it shall not by none be testified.
What is that quest (quoth then Sir Artegall)
That you into such perils presently doth call?
The Blatant Beast (quoth he) I doe pursew,
And through the world incessantly doe chase,
Till I him overtake, or else subdew:
Yet I know him not or how, nor in what place
To find him out, yet still I forward trace.
That's what questing is all about. I get a year to hunt my Blatant Beast, my Boyg (Peer Gynt's personal Blatant Beast). Three days.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
Just a mention of the exams so far. Haven't gone too far off the rails yet, really, except for when I called Sir Walter Elliott a tool, and compared Lancelot to Batman. Also wrote a limerick for the Faerie Queen, which I started my exam on it with:
The ladies and Graces all thrill
To the twirl of young Colin's quadrille;
That a bard, not some fencer's
Our surrogate Spenser
Is clear as his crystalline trill.
If you've read Book VI it's pretty fucking witty thank you very much (Colin Clout, the pastoral piper whose playing provokes a hundred ladies and the three Graces to disrobe and dance in a circle, is Spenser's avatar).
Also, yesterday, I fucked up hardcore. I thought the exam was Renaissance Poetry and 16th Century Identity. Whoops. What a goof. Victorianism and Postcolonialism (one of my weakest subjects; I dislike it rather powerfully), as it turned out. Was almost totally unprepared, and the question on Earnest was absurd: Analyze it as an example of late Victorian farce. What the fuck? Fuck that shit. It's the only late Victorian farce we've read, damn it! How the hell are we supposed to answer that? I had to shoehorn the general question, which was on late Victorian fiction as the literature of a society in transition. I refrained from making the obvious "transitioning" tranny jokes, but took care to indulge my Wilde side all the same. PoCo was a joke. Fuck it. When I found out Chicago's answer, all the stress that had accumulated over these past months just evaporated, and with it went all my motivation. I'm over it. I just want to go home.
Sadie's favorite is a horse of another color entirely. Credit where it's due: she did effectively discover this place last year, before it became overrun with the young and upwardly mobile Dubliners. She's been going religiously for a year, now, and has gained regular status. Her favorite was this guy with a red faux-hawk, a skintight Fellini t-shirt, and the most dignified yet extravagantly gay demeanor. The word for him, I finally realized last night, was "arch." He's a legend. A few months back, she started talking to him. She told him what she was doing here etc., and his response to most of her comments was, with a glorious Italian accent, "yes, I think so." Which subsequently became his name. Yes I Think So (aka The Human Torch; after seeing the preview for the Fantastic Four, we assigned the staff at Cagliostro corresponding superpowers. The owner was Mr. Fantastico, my own personal Dulcinea was Invisible Girl, and Yes I Think So was, of course, the Torch. Flame on! The Thing was the one unattractive guy, a dopey, slow Italian who's probably someone's retarded nephew, and who we caught picking his nose at a table. We don't have anything against the Thing per se, but this guy is suitably grotesque) was a staple of conversation in our apartment, and Sadie was utterly distraught at the thought that he might not be there when she got back. He was there last night, but she didn't get to say goodbye. It was terribly sad.
There have been two spots of bonheur, though. One, which I don't think I mentioned, is that Sadie will be in New York for about six weeks this summer, studying Greek at Columbia. Very exciting. The other, which I wrote a big old hairy blog about yesterday, and which the TCD network subsequently devoured (I hate, hate, HATE it when that happens), is that my mother finally extracted an answer from Chicago.
Effectively the entire course of my life was irrevocably altered two days ago. I wasn't surprised, really; that they could so casually turn around and say Actually, ha ha, no, sorry, not this time, sonny--yes, that exercised me a little. But the fact is, they might be right. It wasn't my fault, so far as I can gather. My grades have soared since the first acceptance (I have nearly an A average this year); there's no way that this time around I didn't meet the standards of adequacy I obviously exceeded two years ago. That just defies all reason. What we think it is is that Trinity drove in one final screw. Not intentionally, I suppose, but still. As it turned out, we think, having taken twenty English courses in two years would virtually eradicate my requirement as an English major, and I would have been largely relegated to core courses, specifically math and science, and the fact is that I would have barely staggered through those classes, and probably failed them. I honestly have no idea what a cosine is anymore, nor what a vertex is. I can scarcely do long division. I would have killed myself for two years, doing subjects I had no interest in at a level I was not equal to. I would have been satisfied with Chicago, I think, and stimulated, but not exactly happy. And I am very happy about what I get to do now.
I will be in New York all year (barring a summer-fall vacation of indeterminate length, during which I'll go pretty much around the world, visiting everyone doing years abroad). I'll work full-time, get brutal at my job. Pay no expenses, amass tons of cash. Hang out at Columbia (Nick, Jonah, I'm keeping changes of clothes at your dorms, and probably a cot, too), take classes there and at the New School. Sporadic, casual junkets to Philly, Boston, etc. Start a novel, start submitting work (publication considerably helps my chances of getting into college again). Try and cultivate a network of literary persons, akin to the musical webs Mom and Jacob have been spinning for years. Party with the family, and best of all, see Jacob through his senior year (I can't begin to say how excited I am). Learn self-discipline. Do only what I want, when I want to. I have this colossal blank canvas now. Time to learn to paint for real.
There's a speech from Book VI of the Faerie Queen that I loved so much I memorized (every exam I have taken so far has been marked by at least one extended, memorized block quote), and then quoted in full on an exam:
But where ye ended haue, now I begin
To tread an endlesse trace withouten guyde,
Or good direction, or how to enter in,
Or how to issue forth in waies untryed,
In perils straunge, in labours long and wide,
In which although good Fortune me befall
Yet it shall not by none be testified.
What is that quest (quoth then Sir Artegall)
That you into such perils presently doth call?
The Blatant Beast (quoth he) I doe pursew,
And through the world incessantly doe chase,
Till I him overtake, or else subdew:
Yet I know him not or how, nor in what place
To find him out, yet still I forward trace.
That's what questing is all about. I get a year to hunt my Blatant Beast, my Boyg (Peer Gynt's personal Blatant Beast). Three days.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
Just a mention of the exams so far. Haven't gone too far off the rails yet, really, except for when I called Sir Walter Elliott a tool, and compared Lancelot to Batman. Also wrote a limerick for the Faerie Queen, which I started my exam on it with:
The ladies and Graces all thrill
To the twirl of young Colin's quadrille;
That a bard, not some fencer's
Our surrogate Spenser
Is clear as his crystalline trill.
If you've read Book VI it's pretty fucking witty thank you very much (Colin Clout, the pastoral piper whose playing provokes a hundred ladies and the three Graces to disrobe and dance in a circle, is Spenser's avatar).
Also, yesterday, I fucked up hardcore. I thought the exam was Renaissance Poetry and 16th Century Identity. Whoops. What a goof. Victorianism and Postcolonialism (one of my weakest subjects; I dislike it rather powerfully), as it turned out. Was almost totally unprepared, and the question on Earnest was absurd: Analyze it as an example of late Victorian farce. What the fuck? Fuck that shit. It's the only late Victorian farce we've read, damn it! How the hell are we supposed to answer that? I had to shoehorn the general question, which was on late Victorian fiction as the literature of a society in transition. I refrained from making the obvious "transitioning" tranny jokes, but took care to indulge my Wilde side all the same. PoCo was a joke. Fuck it. When I found out Chicago's answer, all the stress that had accumulated over these past months just evaporated, and with it went all my motivation. I'm over it. I just want to go home.
Wednesday, June 08, 2005
€111
First off, still no fucking word from Chicago. At least not so far, and I've checked the mailbox three times already. I'm over it at this point. Just wanted to get that out of the way.
Every so often, as I've said before, Trinity do something right. Today was the day to sell your books back to the S.U. bookshop, a deceptively small alcove tucked into the second floor of House 6. I filled a Corona box nicked from the storeroom at work; Sadie had her big canvas Whole Foods bag bulging, straining its straps. Now, last time I tried to sell off books was in New York, when Mike and I helped Linda Golding clean out her apartment. We must have wheeled God only knows how many boxes the ten blocks, a half-mile, from Linda's house down to Gryphon, only to find them paying us a ridiculous pittance for many hundred dollars' worth of books and music. Naturally, I expected more or less the same thing today; they were going to pick through our paltry offering, lifting each book with thumb and index finger, as you would a dead rodent, shaking their heads, culling heartlessly, with mercenary smirks finally dropping a few shekels into our hands and rousting us out, box and bag still weighted down, like our spirits, with our "few thousand battered books," the unwanted miscellanea of a sad, hollow year.
So imagine my surprise when the guy happily notes all the prices of my books, many of which were bought in that same place, raps a few numbers on his calculator and announces that it will come to €46. They will take all of them. They will do the same with Sadie, and hand her €62. I am dumbstruck. They pay 30% of the original price. They are trying to give you as much money as they can. The guy, who's from Virginia, a classicist, came here as an undergrad and got locked into the Ph.D. program, been here eight years (a thought which makes my stomach backflip), notices that one of my books is a yellowed copy of Crockpot Recipes I bought for 50 cent at last year's sale. He says, "oh, you're into slow cookers?"
"Yeah. Wanna buy one?"
"Hell, yes."
And just like that, bam, the last real remaining concern I had disappears. I offer it for €25, and then surreptitously (or so I think; Sadie, who is standing next to me, will later tell me that this was dreadfully obvious) hoist it up to €30 when I offer to throw in the two good cookbooks I have at home. I think it's a fair price. It'll save him that in the long term in any case. He's thrilled. He says he'd been telling his roommate just the other day how much he'd like to have one again. Phenomenal, I say. I'll go home and bring it back for you.
I get home and set to scrubbing that sucker inside and out. The blue scrubby sponge abdicates in favor of the steel wool; the stuff encrusted on the aluminium inside of the heating unit (not the pot itself) is rather reluctant to move, but I do my best. I clean it off and ransack the apartment for anything else I can hock, having realized that I'd bought my Norton at the beginning of the year with the intention to resell it (I have another one in New York because schlepping it transatlantic's a pain in the how's-your-father). Into the pile also goes Ireland's Holy Wars, which I'd finally begun, but realized that being a near-mint hardcover, it's worth more to me sold than in my suitcase. I can get it out of the library if I ever discover a scorching need to know more about the Apprentice Boys' heroic barring of the Derry gates in the mid 1500's or whenever it was. In went my Old English textbook; I don't want to facilitate my ever studying it again. In went Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002, ed. Dave Eggers, purchased at Hodges Fuckus for €4, bargain basement stickers removed. Finally the Faerie Queen Book 1, an old emergency edition. Bought at the S.U. Bookshop. I head back to college, bag of books over one shoulder, slow cooker rattling away under my arm.
Stop off at the Morrison. Need to pick up my P45 form so I can get back whatever taxes they care to return to me. With the publication of this form my employment is officially terminated; goodbye, Morrison.
Up the stairs to the bookshop. A girl is looking wonderingly at the contraption under my arm. I explain to everyone in the store. They've got it confused with a pressure cooker. Ian--that's the guy's name--is thrilled, and hands over €30 without hesitation. He's terribly excited. I give him my number in case the thing, you know, explodes. Just as a guarantee. Put my second batch of books on the table. Three of the books weren't bought used, and were expensive enough that their prices weren't printed on the covers, so they have to check. Meanwhile, Ian and I jaw. He's a cool guy. He appears a bit bewildered at how he ended up actually living here, and understands perfectly why I have to leave before I get locked in. He tells me that colleges in the US were sympathetic when he chose TCD, and that they told him that if he decided to jump ship, there'd always be a place for me. I don't remember extracting that exact promise from Chicago, but I do recall Ted O'Neill saying something like it. At least I hope he did. Oy. Not thinking about it. Have to get back to studying today.
Anyhow, these five books came to €35. With the slow cooker resale, I picked up €111 today. Not too damn shabby, if you ask me. Thanks, Trinity. You earn mad cool points for that. Dinner at halo, here we come.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
By the way, saw a free showing of Kung Fu Hustle last night. Fucking brilliant. Go see it. It's spectacular and hilarious, half Hero (and I mean Hero, not your generic Hong Kong Golden Dragon chop-socky smackfest. Some of the action is genuinely beautiful), half Tex Avery. It's Stephen Chow, the guy who made Shaolin Soccer. He's without equal. And yes, there is a dance sequence.
Every so often, as I've said before, Trinity do something right. Today was the day to sell your books back to the S.U. bookshop, a deceptively small alcove tucked into the second floor of House 6. I filled a Corona box nicked from the storeroom at work; Sadie had her big canvas Whole Foods bag bulging, straining its straps. Now, last time I tried to sell off books was in New York, when Mike and I helped Linda Golding clean out her apartment. We must have wheeled God only knows how many boxes the ten blocks, a half-mile, from Linda's house down to Gryphon, only to find them paying us a ridiculous pittance for many hundred dollars' worth of books and music. Naturally, I expected more or less the same thing today; they were going to pick through our paltry offering, lifting each book with thumb and index finger, as you would a dead rodent, shaking their heads, culling heartlessly, with mercenary smirks finally dropping a few shekels into our hands and rousting us out, box and bag still weighted down, like our spirits, with our "few thousand battered books," the unwanted miscellanea of a sad, hollow year.
So imagine my surprise when the guy happily notes all the prices of my books, many of which were bought in that same place, raps a few numbers on his calculator and announces that it will come to €46. They will take all of them. They will do the same with Sadie, and hand her €62. I am dumbstruck. They pay 30% of the original price. They are trying to give you as much money as they can. The guy, who's from Virginia, a classicist, came here as an undergrad and got locked into the Ph.D. program, been here eight years (a thought which makes my stomach backflip), notices that one of my books is a yellowed copy of Crockpot Recipes I bought for 50 cent at last year's sale. He says, "oh, you're into slow cookers?"
"Yeah. Wanna buy one?"
"Hell, yes."
And just like that, bam, the last real remaining concern I had disappears. I offer it for €25, and then surreptitously (or so I think; Sadie, who is standing next to me, will later tell me that this was dreadfully obvious) hoist it up to €30 when I offer to throw in the two good cookbooks I have at home. I think it's a fair price. It'll save him that in the long term in any case. He's thrilled. He says he'd been telling his roommate just the other day how much he'd like to have one again. Phenomenal, I say. I'll go home and bring it back for you.
I get home and set to scrubbing that sucker inside and out. The blue scrubby sponge abdicates in favor of the steel wool; the stuff encrusted on the aluminium inside of the heating unit (not the pot itself) is rather reluctant to move, but I do my best. I clean it off and ransack the apartment for anything else I can hock, having realized that I'd bought my Norton at the beginning of the year with the intention to resell it (I have another one in New York because schlepping it transatlantic's a pain in the how's-your-father). Into the pile also goes Ireland's Holy Wars, which I'd finally begun, but realized that being a near-mint hardcover, it's worth more to me sold than in my suitcase. I can get it out of the library if I ever discover a scorching need to know more about the Apprentice Boys' heroic barring of the Derry gates in the mid 1500's or whenever it was. In went my Old English textbook; I don't want to facilitate my ever studying it again. In went Best American Nonrequired Reading 2002, ed. Dave Eggers, purchased at Hodges Fuckus for €4, bargain basement stickers removed. Finally the Faerie Queen Book 1, an old emergency edition. Bought at the S.U. Bookshop. I head back to college, bag of books over one shoulder, slow cooker rattling away under my arm.
Stop off at the Morrison. Need to pick up my P45 form so I can get back whatever taxes they care to return to me. With the publication of this form my employment is officially terminated; goodbye, Morrison.
Up the stairs to the bookshop. A girl is looking wonderingly at the contraption under my arm. I explain to everyone in the store. They've got it confused with a pressure cooker. Ian--that's the guy's name--is thrilled, and hands over €30 without hesitation. He's terribly excited. I give him my number in case the thing, you know, explodes. Just as a guarantee. Put my second batch of books on the table. Three of the books weren't bought used, and were expensive enough that their prices weren't printed on the covers, so they have to check. Meanwhile, Ian and I jaw. He's a cool guy. He appears a bit bewildered at how he ended up actually living here, and understands perfectly why I have to leave before I get locked in. He tells me that colleges in the US were sympathetic when he chose TCD, and that they told him that if he decided to jump ship, there'd always be a place for me. I don't remember extracting that exact promise from Chicago, but I do recall Ted O'Neill saying something like it. At least I hope he did. Oy. Not thinking about it. Have to get back to studying today.
Anyhow, these five books came to €35. With the slow cooker resale, I picked up €111 today. Not too damn shabby, if you ask me. Thanks, Trinity. You earn mad cool points for that. Dinner at halo, here we come.
<<>><<>><<>><<>><<>>
By the way, saw a free showing of Kung Fu Hustle last night. Fucking brilliant. Go see it. It's spectacular and hilarious, half Hero (and I mean Hero, not your generic Hong Kong Golden Dragon chop-socky smackfest. Some of the action is genuinely beautiful), half Tex Avery. It's Stephen Chow, the guy who made Shaolin Soccer. He's without equal. And yes, there is a dance sequence.
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