The Five: 2013 Edition

Five Things I Accomplished This Year
1. Graduated from Duke with a double major in Biology and English
2. Got into medical school
3. Started my first full-time job
4. Wrote a senior thesis while overloading on coursework
5. Completed my first short story since 2010 

Five Things I Crossed Off My Bucket List
1. Watched Phantom of the Opera on Broadway
2. Got a second set of earlobe piercings
3. Saw Vermeer's Girl With the Pearl Earring in person
4. Went to a Steve Aoki concert (and sort of finally understood why people are into EDM)
5. Explored NYC on my own

Five Things I Learned to Do This Year
1. Iron a shirt
2. Cook a salmon filet
3. Unclog a shower drain
4. Write a scientific research paper
5. Play poker (except I've forgotten all the hand rankings)

Five Lessons I Learned This Year
1. Don't take your relationships with people for granted.
2. Refrigerate rice ASAP unless you want food poisoning from Bacillus cereus.
3. Trust your gut--it's probably right.
4. Leaving Facebook for a month will do wonders for your actual personal relationships.
5. Happiness is a state of mind under your control. 

Five Songs from 2013 Stuck on Replay
1. "Sacrilege" | Yeah Yeah Yeahs
2. "Do I Wanna Know?" | Arctic Monkeys
3. "Young and Beautiful" | Lana del Rey
4. "DOOM DADA" | T.O.P
5. "Black" | G-Dragon ft. Sky Ferreira 

Five Songs I Found and Fell in Love With This Year
(aka "Don't ask me why I never heard of these songs until now")
1. "Unravel" | Bjork
2. "Lullaby" | Low
3. "Loveeeeeee Song" | Rihanna ft. Future
4. "Twice" | Little Dragon
5. "Blue" | R.E.M. 
Honorable Mention: Beta State's cover of "Unravel" is phenomenal.

Five Favorite Books I Read This Year
1. Daughter of Smoke and Bone | Laini Taylor
2. My Mother She Killed Me, My Father He Ate Me: Forty New Fairy Tales | ed. Kate Bernheimer
3. The Bloody Chamber | Angela Carter
4. Jellicoe Road | Melina Marchetta
5. Burial Rites | Hannah Kent
Honorable Mention: Quoted a line from John Green's The Fault of Our Stars in my medical school personal statement. The eulogy scene slayed me.

Happy Birthday Aurora

Sweater Weather

These hearts adore
Everyone the other beats hardest for
Inside this place is warm
Outside it starts to pour

 -- "Sweater Weather" by The Neighbourhood

Dear Samuel,

Outside, the snow has just begun to fall. The lampposts in the courtyard stand at attention with their heads sloped downwards, soldiers in mourning whose tears have turned white under the light. There is a melancholy beauty ripe only in winter, a chill breath that permeates even amidst the warm champagne glow of celebration.

It has been a quiet Christmas eve. I burned the roof of my mouth on hot soup last night, and my swollen palate has been tingling ever since. I have lost my appetite for the past week, and I wonder what they will say when I return home. Is it a formality, to always say that someone has changed after a prolonged absence? The last time I returned for the holidays, Mrs. Weston professed her unbridled joy in seeing what a lady I had turned out to be. However genuine the intent may be, such excessively effusive compliments unfailingly lead me to wonder just what a horrid little creature I must have been! But with all candidness, how much can a person truly change in five years?

As I write about dear old Weston, it has occurred to me that I have heard so little about you over the years. I confess, I have gathered a meager collection over time--little pieces of you sifted from the hearsay of our neighbors. On a lonely night like this one, I sometimes find myself toying with the fragments, arranging and rearranging a puzzle to form a fractured image of you that I may never complete. 

Do you remember, Samuel? When we were children, your mother would read us fairy tales from that old book, the one with illustrated pages that smelled of smoke and nutmeg. Your favorite was the one about the Brave Little Tailor, but my favorite of them all was the one about the Snow Queen. If you were Kai, I said to you then, I would be Gerda--outwitting the sorceress, escaping from the band of robbers, riding on a reindeer--all in order to save you. But the boy I knew then grew up to be a man--one who scoffed at the idea of needing to be rescued.

Perhaps you knew the truth--that I have been Kai all along, with a heart splintered by ice and eyes blinded by frost. There are warmer days when those old wounds fade into the reverie of lost time, but on these cold winter nights I feel the sting sharper than ever. Imprisoned in this fortress of ice, I have spent this last eternity arranging and rearranging the pieces in hopes of finally freeing myself from you. There is neither love nor hate in the hollow of my chest--the two words imply an inflamed passion of which my soul can no longer fuel--but rather a numbness that stings with a thousand needles at the slightest touch. For the longest time, I prayed to the gods that we would never meet again, for I knew too well that the mere sight of you would doom me once more.

But on this December night, as the clock strikes twelve, I wonder if seeing you may finally put the unfinished puzzle to rest and sever me from the fantasies conjured to fill the blank spaces of your uncompleted image. Because we both know that the blemished reality is far less enticing than the pristine fantasy we have crafted within our own minds. I imagine Mrs. Weston may marvel at how tall and strong you have grown, but you and I have both changed in our prolonged absence. We are children no more.

Yours,           

Veronica

Progress Report No. 5 (and Other Goodies)

Okay, three things:

1) Music
Dunno why it took me so long to rediscover them again, but holy kleenex batman---Arctic Monkeys has been on replay this whole weekend, particularly their AM album. Ultimate favorite is still "Do I Wanna Know?" The lyrics are ingenious, in my opinion, and captures so much of the whole lust-charged unrequited yearning deal. Already shared some of my favorite lines in the last post, but this one's a zinger:

Maybe I'm too busy being yours to fall for somebody new.

The music video for "Why'd You Only Call Me When You're High?" made me laugh a bit--I like that song as well as "Knee Socks." Also perused through some of their older songs, and there are some shattering lines in "505":

What did you expect,
I probably still adore you with your hands around my neck,
Or I did last time I checked

But I crumble completely when you cry,
It seems like once again you've had to greet me with goodbye

Basically, I am completely envious/in awe/CHRIST-WHY-IS-HE-SO-TALENTED about Alex Turner's lyricism, and it doesn't hurt that, considering Sophelia's established proclivity for deep voices and good hair, this wordsmith is also in possession of a baritone voice and an eye-catching hairstyle that I've already discussed at length before. I have a suspicion I'd find him a lot less cool in real life (based on watching a couple of his interviews), but at least in the virtual world of my computer screen, Alex Turner is awesome.

2) Reading (and Watching Movies)
Just finished reading Life After Life by Kate Atkinson last week. It's my first time reading any of her works, and I do admire her writing style a lot. The story itself, however, left me with mixed, though predominantly positive, feelings. On one hand, I thought the plot device of rewinding time again and again until "you get it right" was quite interesting, especially when you see the side characters in Ursula's life play different roles in the parallel storylines. On the other hand, there were some storylines that confused the beejeezus out of me or left me feeling like I just wanted to jump ahead until Ursula died so that things would rewind again. Not perfect in my eyes, but good nevertheless.

Which is kinda how I felt about Frozen, to be quite honest. I was planning to write a separate post about the three movies I've seen the past three weeks (Hunger Games: Catching Fire, Frozen, The Hobbit: Desolation of Smaug), but never got around to it and don't really feel like it at this point. Some things about Frozen though (SPOILERS AHEAD):

1.  WHYYYYY, OH WHYYYY did Disney only give Jonathan Groff one song in the entire movie? And not even a full song at that. Don't get me wrong, I love the reindeer song--I believe I said something quite similar not too long ago (along the lines of: "I like animals. They don't come up to you one day and tell you they don't love you anymore.") But that reindeer song was less than a minute long. What a tease.
2. Along those lines, that movie should have had more songs in the second half. The songs in the first half were great, but then what happened? This is where they should have gotten Jonathan Groff to sing another song--Kristoff had that great emotional moment near the end, or I would have been perfectly happy with another sappy romantic duet in the vein of Tangled's "I See the Light."
3. At the beginning, Kristoff witnessed the trolls erase Anna's memory of Elsa's frost magic. Why did he never mention any of this to her? Sure, maybe he was a little kid then and it was so long ago, but considering that was the moment he was adopted by the trolls, I think he'd remember how he ended up there in the first place.
4. Hans, I don't like you because I don't understand you. Yeah, you were totally skeezy in that "Love is an Open Door" song, but I didn't quite brand you as a villain because your actions didn't add up. If you were really just going to kill the princesses anyways so you could take the throne, why did you bother going off to look for Anna when you could have just sat in the castle and taken over from there? AND WHY DO YOU GET A DUET WHEN KRISTOFF DOESN'T?
5. Am I the only one who thought Hans would end up marrying one of the princesses? Since he was totally marketed as a prince rather than a villain in Disney's promo material. 

All in all, I liked the songs and thought Disney crafted an intriguing sisterly spin on one of my favorite fairy tales of all time. But I gotta deduct points, because those plot holes and the egregious lack of Jonathan Groff drove me mental.


3)   Writing
Was completely antisocial and sedentary this weekend--to the point that I started getting a headache, which rarely ever happens--but managed to churn out around 4.5k words. Not completely happy with most of it, but whatever. I just need to keep plowing ahead and I'll let my perfectionist side run free later. Funny thing I've realized--I was totally like Charlotte back in high school, feeling sorry about myself for so many things, but when I try to write in her voice nowadays I'm like, GIRL STOP THE PITY PARTY AND LET'S MOVE IT. Which is why it's kind of fun writing in Laurel-who-has-been-reincarnated-as-Ruqayya-long-story-I'll-explain-later, who tells it like it is and doesn't put up with her shit.

Do I Wanna Know?

'Cause there's this tune I found that makes me think of you somehow and I play it on repeat
Until I fall asleep

Been wondering if your heart's still open and if so I wanna know what time it shuts

Do you want me crawling back to you?

-- "Do I Wanna Know?" by Arctic Monkeys

-----------------

Oh man. I still remember when the Arctic Monkeys came out with their first album. That was back when I would listen to the alternative rock radio station on the stereo while I did my homework during freshman year of high school. Seems like their latest album has become a major hit recently. I heard this song on Songza's "Today's Biggest Hits" playlist and was immediately hooked on the guitar riff. Then I happened to find this video, and holy hell. Seeing Alex Turner in this video was kinda like stumbling upon photos of an old friend or flame that you haven't set eyes on in years and realizing that they've Neville-Longbottomed (see: Matthew Lewis).

I read a blog post somewhere online, where someone stated that they were not a fan of his greaser hairstyle.  I beg to differ. I've always liked this type of retro hairstyle, and it lends a certain swagger that was absent during his mop-top phase. I don't know whether or not it works when Alex Turner is just walking around or grocery shopping like a civilian, but onstage, he rocks the quiff. 

I'll grant that not everyone can pull it off. I've tried mentally imposing this hairstyle on the guys I know, and good god do they look terribly pretentious in my head. But when you're the lead vocalist/guitarist/songwriter for an indie rock band, you can carry that loaded edge of masculine sensuality without seeming overbearingly smarmy. 

Incinerated Innocence

Must-read article here:

http://www.texasmonthly.com/story/other-side-story?fullpage=1

I wonder how often these illicit teacher-student relationships occur. Considering the number of times this sort of scandal has arisen in my own high school, perhaps it is more common than frequently reported in mass media. When I was in eighth grade, a chemistry teacher from my neighborhood high school was arrested for sexual misconduct with a minor. In my freshman year of high school, a yearbook teacher got in trouble for charges related to child pornography. Three years after I graduated, an assistant principal was arrested for unlawful sexual contact with a minor--a girl who happened to be from my brother's year.

Or perhaps I just grew up in a strange environment, where it seems underneath the haze of upper-middle-class malaise bubbled a darkness that I didn't comprehend at the time. I've always wondered if I experienced a "normal" teenage experience. Was it normal that by my freshman year of high school, I had known three people--all within two years of my age, people that I had interacted personally with in varying degrees--who died? There are people who experienced more traumatic losses at a young age than mine. But there are also luckier people who do not encounter these reminders of mortality until later in their lives.

A piano teacher I admired--who passed away few years ago from a heart attack, he was only in his forties--once asked my teacher if I had experienced a traumatic event as a child. He told her that I connected with sorrowful songs far better than anything else. He was the one who recommended that I learn to play Rachmaninoff's Elegie. My mother and my teacher assured him that I had a fairly tranquil upbringing. But as I thought about this incident over time, I began to wonder if I had subconsciously internalized the jolting awareness of my own mortality as a child. Though she and I were two years apart and not the closest of friends, I think that regardless, learning as a sixth grader that your friend was shot and killed by her own father in a murder-suicide will leave some kind of impact on you.

Going back to the teacher-student relationship addressed in the article, I have always been appalled by how much these sort of affairs are romanticized and fantasized in certain subcultures of fiction. I can't count how many times I've encountered this trope in shoujo manga. As much as I reviled the patronizing condescension I faced when I was a teenager, in retrospect I feel that those years were akin to how I feel under the influence of alcohol. You think you're in total control, but in reality you fumble around and make many questionable decisions. Can a 14-year-old and a 23-year-old actually be in love? Perhaps. But I would hazard to say that most 14-year-old girls are not on the same page mentally or emotionally as 23-year-old men.

But the devil's advocate may ask if my opinion would change if she had been seventeen at the time instead. Just because you legally become an adult at age eighteen doesn't mean you mentally become one, nor does it mean that nobody under the age of eighteen has the ability to make mature rational decisions. Looking back, as an eighteen-year-old I was definitely not mature enough to handle a sexual relationship--and considering the fact that the "teenage hormones" people speak of seemed to have bypassed me completely during high school, everything worked out for the best. But I have friends who were curious at a younger age and who were "ready" by the time they took the plunge. Are things more "okay" if a "ready"16-year-old satiates their curiosity with an immature 17-year-old, versus if they were with, say, a mature 19-year-old who treats them with care?

A college friend and I discovered recently that through a couple of degrees of separation, we both knew of a couple separated by an eight-year age difference. The girl is a high school senior; the boy is a medical student three years older than me, which puts him in his mid-twenties. Supposedly, their parents approve of the relationship. Perhaps we can say they are in love. But is this situation tolerable at least partly because he does not hold a direct authority position over her? Or is it because she's almost, if not already, an adult under the eyes of the law? How on earth can you qualify when someone is "too young to know better"?

december nightmare

the black widow spider could not be pried from my tongue. the red hourglass gleamed from the mirror's reflection, the mark of bloodied time skulking in a cavernous mouth. they prodded with metal instruments until finally half of the body was excised, while the other half remained stubbornly affixed--a blackened lump with thin protruding legs, shuddering as if they were crawling upon my tongue. i felt the venom swell in my tongue, lips, my throat as i sank to the floor, listening to the air whistle through my narrowing windpipe as i watched you delivered a wordless speech at the front of the classroom. you showed no notice of the dying animal before you, just stood there with your glazed eyes staring straight at nothing at all as your mouth emitted empty puffs of carbon dioxide. breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, bre

Progress Report No. 4

I suppose a progress report is overdue, so here we go:

Like I predicted, my November was too hectic for me to actually make a meaningful attempt towards NaNoWriMo's 50k target. In reality, I probably only wrote ~9k overall. As the year approaches the end, I've started having minor panic attacks right before I drift to sleep that I will never finish writing this damn thing. I know it's a pressure I've put on myself -- that if I don't finish a draft by the end of this gap year, I will have to defer this project for an even longer period of time once my future career plans start kicking in. I've been contemplating setting up stricter writing schedules the way I used to do with my study schedules as a college undergrad--waking up earlier, sacrificing sleep, etc.

The problem with that, though, is that I don't necessarily write better under pressure. I wrote a completely new scene last weekend, and it turned out to be probably my favorite piece of writing that I've produced in the past month. However, the rest of the stuff I've produced has left me with mixed feelings. On one hand, I think my writing has improved since high school in the sense that I've become much more precise with my language and more restrained when it comes to purple-y prose. But on the other hand, I feel as if I've lost the ethereal and poetic quality I held so much pride in before. It's still there somewhere, but I haven't figured out quite how to coax it back out. Optimistically, I might have made a breakthrough yesterday afternoon--a key piece of music came up on my iPod as I was writing a particular scene, and though it was only two sentences, those two sentences were reminiscent of my old vignette style--in the best way.

Anyways, I have a lot of work to do. =_____=

In other news, lots of good deals on YA books via Amazon today. I went a book shopping spree and bought the kindle edition of Days of Blood and Starlight ($3) and hardcover copies of The Fault in Our Stars ($6) and the boxed set of Legend, Prodigy, and Champion ($20). I wasn't madly in love with Legend, but twenty dollars for three hardcover books was too good to resist. In any case, I'm excited to read the rest of the trilogy. Eleanor and Park is also on sale for both the hardcover and Kindle editions, but I think I'm going to pass on that book. I've already wrote my thoughts about that book here. I really wish I had someone to discuss that book with, because I feel like I'm the only person in the world who wasn't head over heels for that book!!

Meanwhile, I've been spreading my time between two books. Finally got my hands on a copy of Life After Life by Kate Atkinson, which I've been reading in small bits during my lunch breaks at work. The book hasn't quite gripped me, so it's been a slow but steady process. I also read the first part of Nights at the Circus in one sitting over the weekend, and I remain in awe of Angela Carter's power. Considering how much trouble I had with the frame narrative in Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, I was surprised by how invested I became in the story-within-a-story in Nights at the Circus.

I feel like I should start having a Currently Reading and Currently Listening section on the side of this blog...