78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



Have I Got One For You
2005-06-15   12:33 a.m.

A big blank space, and nothing to fill it with. You know, I really should be sleeping now. Really.

I'm friends with some of the best storytellers in the New York Metro area - I'm convinced. Perhaps that's why we've bonded; I think I'm a good storyteller too. When it down-poured torrentially during our out-side wedding, my bestest oldest friend Marcy said "Well, you always have a story for everything, don't you," I suppose by way of comfort.

It cleared up the day of our wedding soon enough, and we danced the night away under tents nonetheless, but Marcy was right: our wedding is full of great story-moments, mostly because of the weather.

Tonight, I eventually wound up at a Montclair area bar having wine with a few friends, all of whom try to out-story each other. I take that back; as we get older, we wait our turns patiently and then attach our stories onto another's. It's actually quite brilliant - it's like a story that unfolds, but not without borrowing from the section before. Like train cars, I suppose, all individual and containing different things, but each invariably linked to the one before and the one after.

Ryan, a friend who works in film, had a most amazing, funny, and surreal story tonight, which I couldn't possibly do justice now. I'll give only the punchline to his story: "Sorry I'm late," said Ryan to his boss, "I was trapped in an elevator with the Village People."

As in the YMCA village people. Yes indeed! I want to be...a macho man.

I let my class go early tonight because of the oppressive heat; I could see that they were wilting away as we discussed the European witch-hunt craze and Maryse Conde's novel I, Tituba, Black Witch of Salem. I could have kept on for hours; the subject matter is endlessly fascinating to me and the heat doesn't bother me. I was definitely built for warmer climates - I get depressed in the winter because of the dark and the cold, and I ran three miles today and felt just fine and dandy afterwards. Maybe one day we'll move to Guadeloupe after all.

I was planning on meeting my husband and the aforementioned friends around 9:30, right after they finished attending a free test-screening of a film which I, ahem, was invited too but obviously couldn't be present for. Truthfully I'm glad they went in my place; I really want this company to keep calling with offers to screen movies. I think they call more frequently when someone from the household shows up every time.

Since I adjourned my class by 8:40 and had some extra time, I decided to do some research at the library for an article I'm assembling on Victorian women's "fashionable" or fictitious diseases. You know the kind - the ones that substituted for and covered up the fact that women were angry about their inferior social status and lack of opportunity. Elizabeth's not angry about being kept from attending University, you see, she's just got a case of "the vapors". Or perhaps it's "neurasthenia". Whatever, let's just institutionalize her and see how she responds to being kept in a little cage for a month.

I went down into the basement of Dana library - the creepy room where the hard-bound journals are kept. No one is down there, ever, and since it was 9-ish on a Summer night, and since Newark is E-vil, I got all spooked out being by myself. Didn't help that while I was looking for issue 4 of the Journal of Interdisciplinary History I stumbled across the Journal of Morbidity and Mortality. Just the title alone was enough to creep me out; I mean really - what the F?

Anyway, I finally found the journal I needed, but the article I was looking for was cut out of the volume. Literally - the pages were torn away. I brought the volume up to the circulation desk and the librarian thanked me for alerting her to the damage.

So on to Plan B: a rare volume of Mary Wollstonecraft's early essays, one of which discusses her friend's illness which she believed to be manufactured by said friend's doctor, a specialist in "Lady's Diseases". I finally find the book in the stacks, but wouldn't you know, the article in question has been cut out of the book.

I went back to the circulation desk and said "Um...hi again...you're going to think I am doing this or something, but I swear I'm not...this one is damaged too."

I got a strange look, but another thank you. I got out of the library, fast, because I figured I either a)have a doppelganger running around trying to beat me to submitting the article on Victorian Ladies' fictitious diseases, or b)I was having a Fight Club moment, manifesting an evil Theresa who cuts things out of library journals and books because she can't be bothered with checking them out. Which sane and regular Theresa, of course, wouldn't have any conscious memory of.

I sure hope I don't have dissociative disorder. But how to explain this? Surely it's all a coincidence. But is this subject matter really something so popular that grad students would feel compelled to take materials away from their fellow students in an attempt to look better? Erm, literature and gender studies grad degrees aren't terribly competitive or cut-throat, last I checked. They can be difficult, don't get me wrong; grad school is grad school if you're at a decent one. But everyone is sort of relaxed and groovy in that corner of academia. It's not like it's law school, or something.

Weird, huh? Good story, hey? Bed time. I want to snuggle with my boo.

xoxoxo

PS- Big joke of the night: me naming several actors/celebrities whom I find attractive, and John saying "He sort of looks like Steve!" and Ryan saying "...so does he! HAW HAW HAW!" That's sort of a nice psychologial reveal, isn't it? Yes, I'm a lucky gal.



Ah, the early years. Circa 2001!