no matter how hard you try, or how much time passes, there are some people that you will not be able to stand. or tolerate, if you will.
this does not make you a bad person. it simply means that you don’t have enough in common to be able to be around them or hear news about them.
it doesn’t make them a bad person either. it just means they’re annoying. and that’s fine. you might be annoying to someone. you probably are. life goes on, though. we wake up, we try not to focus on the bad, and we indulge in things we are passionate about, no matter how ridiculous those passions might be.
for me, it’s tacos, wizard rock, good fanfiction, poetry, good books, and drawing pictures of sexy women or my friends. those are all simple things that can take my mind so far from one annoying person that i’m clear for the rest of the night. and that’s all i really ever need. just to be okay for the night. because tomorrow, regardless of chores and things i have to do, i force room for past time activities. i am a snail.
sometimes i’ve felt bad about my snail-like existence. not everyone gets the chance to do their favorite past time activities, so stress piles up on them and before they know it they’re tossing themselves off mount doom. but i know how important these past times are for me. some call it lazy, but i call it taking my mind off of the people and things i can’t stand.
and it’s working.
snail-like, but it is.
27 December 2011
26 December 2011
Family Photos
“nans, i went to both ladies
at target
you’re saving the photos to the
camera, not the card.”
“hm.”
mom adds her 2 cents.
“she can put the card
in her computer
and tell you more than they did.”
i dash away, beckon the internet -
oh look,
all 18 shining photos
i never wanted to see
hello, sister.
“it’s a close-up! doesn’t she look nice?”
no, she doesn’t.
she’s just a big-toothed stranger.
and there you are, dad,
smiling next to her like there’s no tomorrow.
but when you’re shoved into my vicinity,
the camera melts. you are plastic.
i wonder what someone would say
if they ever tied us down long enough
to see our family photo.
at target
you’re saving the photos to the
camera, not the card.”
“hm.”
mom adds her 2 cents.
“she can put the card
in her computer
and tell you more than they did.”
i dash away, beckon the internet -
oh look,
all 18 shining photos
i never wanted to see
hello, sister.
“it’s a close-up! doesn’t she look nice?”
no, she doesn’t.
she’s just a big-toothed stranger.
and there you are, dad,
smiling next to her like there’s no tomorrow.
but when you’re shoved into my vicinity,
the camera melts. you are plastic.
i wonder what someone would say
if they ever tied us down long enough
to see our family photo.
23 December 2011
"the christmas thing" warning: sad
my mom noted the other day, "i don't think tianna's much into the christmas thing."
and i'm really not. for me, christmas is 50% about the snow, 35% about food, 5% about family time, and 10% about sleeping. i really hope that added up.
the whole thing just makes me so sad. buying presents, expecting a lot, giving more than you need to, feeling like your gifts and money are inadequate, people giving and getting shitty gifts, people ignoring their families on the holidays, it just comes back to haunt me every year. the rushing last-minute crowds, the screaming children, the pleading parents - it makes me want to break down and cry.
i like thanksgiving a lot more. i can't put my finger on it, but i think it's mostly because there's no pressure. in my house, thanksgiving has always equaled food, fatness, and football. and absolutely nothing else. christmas is different. it's things like christmas where gifts are a tradition - expected - that makes me miss people (or more accurately, the way they used to be) - my sister, my dad, my family as a whole, myself. this holiday makes me feel like i need to be perfect. it makes me feel like i should be richer. its consumerism makes me feel like i am stuck in an age of cheesy commercials and if-you-don't-have-a-normal-family-at-least-a-normal-holiday-dinner-then-you-dont-know-what-christmas-is. and that consumerist state is where i'm living. and every christmas, there's no way out.
so i'm sorry, mom, if i don't seem too into the christmas thing. i guess 2 hours in a car to wait for a crappy ten minute light show in the pouring rain is not my thing. i'm sorry you get so excited to the point of squealing and i look like a deadbeat in the backseat. i'm truly, truly sorry, because i know it's your thing. i know your parents told you you wouldn't get presents if you didn't believe in santa clause. i know they were different. and i know you're the only one in the family i have left, and i'm sorry we can't even connect on this level while i'm home from school.
and i'm really not. for me, christmas is 50% about the snow, 35% about food, 5% about family time, and 10% about sleeping. i really hope that added up.
the whole thing just makes me so sad. buying presents, expecting a lot, giving more than you need to, feeling like your gifts and money are inadequate, people giving and getting shitty gifts, people ignoring their families on the holidays, it just comes back to haunt me every year. the rushing last-minute crowds, the screaming children, the pleading parents - it makes me want to break down and cry.
i like thanksgiving a lot more. i can't put my finger on it, but i think it's mostly because there's no pressure. in my house, thanksgiving has always equaled food, fatness, and football. and absolutely nothing else. christmas is different. it's things like christmas where gifts are a tradition - expected - that makes me miss people (or more accurately, the way they used to be) - my sister, my dad, my family as a whole, myself. this holiday makes me feel like i need to be perfect. it makes me feel like i should be richer. its consumerism makes me feel like i am stuck in an age of cheesy commercials and if-you-don't-have-a-normal-family-at-least-a-normal-holiday-dinner-then-you-dont-know-what-christmas-is. and that consumerist state is where i'm living. and every christmas, there's no way out.
so i'm sorry, mom, if i don't seem too into the christmas thing. i guess 2 hours in a car to wait for a crappy ten minute light show in the pouring rain is not my thing. i'm sorry you get so excited to the point of squealing and i look like a deadbeat in the backseat. i'm truly, truly sorry, because i know it's your thing. i know your parents told you you wouldn't get presents if you didn't believe in santa clause. i know they were different. and i know you're the only one in the family i have left, and i'm sorry we can't even connect on this level while i'm home from school.
16 December 2011
The Square Root of Facebook and my Ex
The tips of my hair breach the icy water as I bend over the sink, back throbbing. Toothpaste (zahnpasta) slugs toward the drain. I shuffle back to my cave, clenching my hands around your curly hair fresh out of the shower. My laptop glows, greeting me like a lover.
First picture. Look, it’s us as strangers. It won’t be until months later that I scrape my knees – and my elbows and my calves – falling for you. Each morning is the kinetic energy of a looping rollercoaster, halving me over the toilet with a twisted grin.
Next picture. Look, it’s you immersed with your laptop. The way you concentrate on the screen, eyes wide (as opposed to the familiar squint) – I know your whole being is focused on it. I still wish you could’ve saved some of that energy for me.
Next picture. Look, there’s your family. Arms enveloping. Eyes sparkling. Smiles glittering. So unlike my clump of relatives. The two of us left surround the dining room table set for Thanksgiving, stabbing at our segregated foods – somewhere between the fake turkey and the real turkey is your Sprite and bacon.
Damn it, you’re in my dining room too.
And here’s this Word document, sinking under the adolescence anchor. And I’m done with your photo albums, done with your sapiosexuality, so my brain crawls through the plain white hallways back to senior year. Ten sweaty fingers grasped my Samsung Reality, attempting to spell out my seizing heart.
None of the frantic Forensics class texts sent under the Green River Killer’s watchful gaze from the TV ever mattered. My thoughts jogged laps around themselves – empty calories. Mr. Zoldak wasn’t stupid, he knew my cell phone was propped up against my bag with the lowest light setting just like everyone else’s.
“We’re on lockdown. There was some campus shooting. How appropriate that we’re learning about this shit.” My immaculate anti chat speak messages were bred from your politically correct tongue, while my mind was a slur of “will you just get in my bed already?” and “oh, my mom’s gonna love you”.
You didn’t buzz my Samsung back until late that night.
You gravitated toward my love, but I never saw the red creeping up your cheekbones.
That was the last time I’ll ever look through your tagged photos, I swear.
First picture. Look, it’s us as strangers. It won’t be until months later that I scrape my knees – and my elbows and my calves – falling for you. Each morning is the kinetic energy of a looping rollercoaster, halving me over the toilet with a twisted grin.
Next picture. Look, it’s you immersed with your laptop. The way you concentrate on the screen, eyes wide (as opposed to the familiar squint) – I know your whole being is focused on it. I still wish you could’ve saved some of that energy for me.
Next picture. Look, there’s your family. Arms enveloping. Eyes sparkling. Smiles glittering. So unlike my clump of relatives. The two of us left surround the dining room table set for Thanksgiving, stabbing at our segregated foods – somewhere between the fake turkey and the real turkey is your Sprite and bacon.
Damn it, you’re in my dining room too.
And here’s this Word document, sinking under the adolescence anchor. And I’m done with your photo albums, done with your sapiosexuality, so my brain crawls through the plain white hallways back to senior year. Ten sweaty fingers grasped my Samsung Reality, attempting to spell out my seizing heart.
None of the frantic Forensics class texts sent under the Green River Killer’s watchful gaze from the TV ever mattered. My thoughts jogged laps around themselves – empty calories. Mr. Zoldak wasn’t stupid, he knew my cell phone was propped up against my bag with the lowest light setting just like everyone else’s.
“We’re on lockdown. There was some campus shooting. How appropriate that we’re learning about this shit.” My immaculate anti chat speak messages were bred from your politically correct tongue, while my mind was a slur of “will you just get in my bed already?” and “oh, my mom’s gonna love you”.
You didn’t buzz my Samsung back until late that night.
You gravitated toward my love, but I never saw the red creeping up your cheekbones.
That was the last time I’ll ever look through your tagged photos, I swear.
15 December 2011
City Girl
A gust of oven-like July air whips my face, gathering my pink dress behind one knee. I step into the Monongahela Incline station with my mother and Danny. Around us, potential passengers await the chariot that will take them down the hill. Hills – one of the most comforting aspects about growing up in Pittsburgh. Ever since I was pea-sized my dad would remind me that the chances of a tornado rolling through our city were slim to none: there were so many big, bad hills to scare the measly storm away.
The Monongahela (“Mon”) Incline, the nation’s oldest cable car, brings travelers from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill. Since 1870, it has transported twenty-three people at a time at six miles per hour up and down the hill. A decade earlier, the city’s industrialization was booming, magnetizing mainly German immigrants. The crowded industry pushed them to the top of “Coal Hill” (Mt. Washington). Transportation up and down the hill was difficult, so the Germans instinctively decided to bring their seilbahns (cable cars) to the city.
Taking a step back from the outlook binoculars, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is the City of [446] Bridges, the Steel City, and home of the Steelers. We bleed black and yellow, the hues blending together to form the dirty brown gunk that settles at the bottom of the three rivers: the Monongahela and the Allegheny, which merge into the Ohio.
Above the Allegheny, the Three Sisters were the first self-anchored suspension bridges in the United States. Their top cables attach to the actual road as opposed to in the ground. Built during the Great Depression, these bridges loom over Pittsburghers, filling them with a strong sense of pride. The steel Three Sisters are the only trio of identical bridges, unusual for being built with cantilever methods, or having a beam of support at only one end. In other places, you might have to choose either precarious or sturdy to describe a structure: in Pittsburgh, we want – and get – the best of both worlds. Danny sees the Incline as dangerous, but I think of it as extremely durable, and maybe that’s the beauty of the contraption as well as the city. It’s spontaneous and unexpected, yet wholesome. Every glimpse of the Pittsburgh skyline is somehow different from the glance stolen previously.
Because the Incline gives such a great view of downtown as it snakes down the hill, it’s often the first place that pops into my mind along with a mental Post-It note of “you need to see this!” when my Internet friends tell me they’re coming to visit my city.
This is the nature of my meeting Danny: I accepted his MySpace friend request – he was a fellow Harry Potter fan and musician – and shortly after learned he was dating a mutual friend of ours, Liz. After that, we both attended Terminus, a Harry Potter convention in Chicago. After returning to the online world and joining a yearlong YouTube collaboration channel together, we decided a reunion was in order.
***
While we reunite we wait for a pink jumper clad child to crawl into an Incline seat and then we settle for the upmost bench. I’m squished between my mom and Danny.
Danny’s knuckles whiten around the wooden bench beneath us. A lumpy graffiti heart reads “A&L Forever!” The skyscrapers beyond the musty glass panes of the Incline barely catch my eye; the sights have become like next-door neighbors. My mother giggles at the way Danny wildly cranes his neck out the window to spot the Carnegie Science Center, the PPG (Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company) Building, which has a 60-foot Christmas tree in the center of its ice skating rink, and Heinz Field, the Steelers’ playground.
In the distance, the yellow Three Sisters bridges arch and bend under the humidity. I think of how sturdy they are, how they’ve been stretched across the Allegheny for almost a century. It reminds me of how my best friend Bobby has always been ever-present in my life.
***
I frantically stuffed clothes into a suitcase the night before I left for college. I put off most of my packing until several hours before I left to distract myself from how much I’d miss home. My mom and I planned to leave at six a.m. On top of the hole that would be left in my heart from the lack of familiar cats to greet me at the college entrance, I knew my bones would be aching with exhaustion once I got there.
Blinking back tears, trying to attach myself to numbness, I stumbled down the darkened stairwell to my kitchen, hoping to find solace somewhere in the empty cabinets. I wasn’t searching long through stale Triscuits before I got a text from Bobby saying, “I’m on my way with Taco Bell.” It’s something we’d always joked about, since neither of us could drive, that one day he would randomly show up at my house and together we would rid our problems with guacamole and mild sauce.
I didn’t reply, just awaited his arrival with anticipation: to eat, but more importantly to wrap my arms around my best friend one last time before separating for three months. We chowed down on our burritos, laughing at Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the TV and acting like nothing was about to change.
I can’t help but draw connections between the Three Sisters bridges and the people I associate with this city. It would take a lot to crush their impulsive spirits.
***
“What if this thing falls off the tracks?” Danny panics, his voice rising with fear. The women across from us look at him affectionately, as if he’s a child who’s lost his mother.
Danny is nineteen. He’s from Buffalo, New York, where the plains stretch for miles and the hills hide under a cloak of invisibility. They have grass; we have strong, square-grounded buildings. They grow shaky people like Danny, who can’t even picture the bottom of the hill; we grow sturdy and comforting people like my mother, who knows exactly where to look when I misplace my glasses. To Danny, this fit-for-the-elderly Incline ride is just as scary as the Phantom’s Revenge, Kennywood’s most dangerously thrilling rollercoaster. In actuality, we’re moving along at turtle speed.
“We won’t fall off, sweetheart. This thing has been running for hundreds of years,” my mom tells him, and one of the women nods in agreement.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Danny grabs around for my hand as we roll down the hill. His big brown doe eyes are focused on the clouds, far, far away.
I let him latch onto me. Glossy buildings ahead reflect the setting sun, whose rays bounce off my glasses and back onto the Incline’s windows. The Monongahela River glistens, every few feet of her segmented by golden lights. Every Internet friend that comes to visit me makes my perspective on this city shift.
Pittsburgh has been voted “America’s Most Livable City” numerous times by business leaders like Forbes.com and The Economist. The “Livability” flows from a diverse cultural community, the fact that job opportunities aren’t completely invisible, highly available education, affordable housing, and accessible transportation. The language of Pittsburghese is an eccentric one, featuring words such as chipped ham and hoagies, yinz and jaggerbushes. “Keep a babushka around your little head to keep ahht the cold!” my father would warn before I’d head off to school in the mornings. “Hun, will you help me warsh the car when you get home?”
But the memories I have of the ‘Burgh go deeper than dialect.
***
It was my eighth birthday – August 7th, so hot that the skin on my arms could’ve peeled over my fingernails and ended up a boneless puddle on the concrete.
“I hope you know I’m gonna splash you with water, birthday girl!” my friend Jessica teased. I frowned and refrained from giggling: I wasn’t a girly girl.
Our floral Target bathing suits hugged our bellies, scrunchies clasped our ponytails tight, and excitement prodded us in the back, urging us into the backseat. When we arrived at the wave pool, however, a large brown sign announced its closure because of storms earlier in the day.
“I want to go in!” I grumbled, crossing my arms. That stupid sign wasn’t holding me back from my cool, beloved waves – not on my birthday!
“We’ll figure something out, sweetheart,” my mom took me by the shoulder and spun me in the direction of our Subaru.
When we got home, there was no need to take our bathing suits off – my sister and brother were already ready with a full bucket of water balloons to pelt us with! Within five minutes of having launched I had forgotten all about the wave pool’s closure: all that mattered was seeing how many of my friends I could get soaking wet. There was something about that day, something I found at home that I couldn’t find at my favorite place to swim, and that something planted an impulsive instinct within me.
***
“Thanks so much for helping us out, Tianna.”
As a high school senior I volunteered at the East End Food Co-Op (“Open to everyone, everyday”), home of local produce and sustainable groceries. The aroma of Jambalaya rice and curried tofu wriggled their way through the air into my nostrils. I checked in on my last day before an employee grabbed me by the arm and led me to the storage room for a secret vegetarian Thanksgiving feast. And I thought my last day volunteering would be just another day of stocking beans!
I sat on a plastic bench and stuffed my face full of Tofurky and potatoes before venturing back out into the organic chaos.
“Aisle five for the vegan lip balm,” I told the pretty white-haired girl with plugs in her ears who approached me while I stocked boxes of chai tea. At the end of my third hour, I would hurry back to the “Produce Pit” and take peppers and potatoes that were perfectly fine but deemed too damaged to be sold. With the unprocessed, natural food came an unprocessed, natural atmosphere where everyone spoke in a tone that left me feeling warm despite the winter winds.
Across the neighboring Liberty Bridge and east down 71B, you’ll find the Cathedral of Learning, which is the centerpiece of the University of Pittsburgh. This forty-two-floor building has served as a hang out for my friends and I on numerous occasions. Sometimes we’ll film Harry Potter-themed music videos; other times we’ll just stroll around the old, pictorial building.
During the making of the Cathedral in 1926, the Great Depression-struck builders found themselves in debt. An international fundraiser was created where various countries sent money to fund this Gothic Revival building. As a result, there are twenty-seven nationality rooms dedicated to each contributor. In the words of the tenth University of Pittsburgh Chancellor John Gabbert Bowman, “The building was to be more than a schoolhouse; it was to be a symbol of the life that Pittsburgh through the years had wanted to live.” This rings very true, and I can’t help but agree that Pittsburgh has its own wants: the high arches and Indiana limestone under my feet makes me feel as if I’m in a postcard. Each time I visit, it’s hard not to dig for my digital camera and capture the aged nooks and crannies, sure that so many before me have done the same.
In times such as these, I feel like a tourist in my own city. From the “Mon” Incline to this magnificent education palace, Pittsburgh houses my every whimsical want. If I were to say, “Let’s go look at dead birds with their eyes stuffed full of cotton!” the sentence wouldn’t have to be fully out of my mouth before we’d be in the car on our way to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Other times, such as when my online friends visit my city, it feels as if I am sucked into the city itself, as if the city built me and parts of my heritage are ground into the steel mills.
Since the months leading up to the Harry Potter convention Terminus in 2008, I’ve made connections with people who, before the convention, were only Internet friends – friends I had strong relationships with, yet only existed online. A select few came to Pittsburgh to visit me, however. They slept on my bedroom floor, let me cook vegan food for them, and whipped out their cameras at all the ‘Burgh sights.
Ivy, a girl from southwest Virginia with a triangular smile, was my first Internet friend. We bonded on MySpace over our mutual Harry Potter addiction, and she visited me for the whole month of July before Terminus. We decided to make this happen spur-of-the-online-moment a couple weeks before she showed up at my house on the hill with a hug tight enough to crack my back.
I ended up taking her to Mt. Washington, where she held back squeals of fear on the Incline, but the skyline wasn’t as memorable as she was. She had a southern way of speaking that tugged at the corners of my lips, daring them to curve into a smile.
“Do you want to go to the pool sometime?” I asked Ivy in an attempt at taking her mind off the apparently horrid screeching of the Incline’s breaks down the 370-foot hill.
Her blonde brows knitted together. “What’s that?”
“Like, a swimming pool?” I clarified, not sure what I said wrong.
“Ohhh, the po-ell!”
I erupted in laughter, wondering if maybe my accent was the confusing one.
In the midst of dying each other’s hair red one night, we decided to make a quick Wal-Mart trip to pick up iron-on letters for the T-shirts we wanted to make in celebration of Ivy’s first wizard rock concert in the ‘Burgh.
“This is ridiculous. When are we going back?” Ivy groaned with a blue plastic bag on her head, retaining heat while her hair turned a deep burgundy color.
“I don’t know,” I laughed. “When we find the right letters!” my mouth ached from smiling as I arched off the dirty Wal-Mart floor, lunging for a “G” or a “Y” – how many people wanted to spell “Ginny”, really?
When Ivy left Pittsburgh, she took a piece of me with her, but she gave me something as well. She revived within me an unstructured courage to say whatever I wanted, how I wanted it, whenever I wanted to – after all, everyone has different accents.
***
After a Paramore and No Doubt concert in the summer of 2009 I got lost in Squirrel Hill at two a.m. with another Internet friend, Alex, and his Cinderella license – we were out three hours past the underage drivers’ curfew limitation.
“Guys, where do I turn?” Alex steered away from a swerving car.
“Up here… No, here. No, maybe try right there.” Bobby tried his best not to sound clueless from the backseat. I chewed on my chocolate chip cookie from the East End Food Co-Op and tried to summon the homey smells that would drag reassuring comfort along with them.
“Yeah, that’s Boulevard of the Allies!” I, for once, felt totally in control of my navigational skills. And then… “It’s not? Shit...”
As we flew around the curbs I felt weightless, like I was running for my life while still sitting shotgun. The heated night air tangled my hair in its claws, tempting me, whistling and chanting, “why aren’t you worried, child?” I didn’t know the answer, and I didn’t care for it. Freedom is as freedom does.
Beechwood Boulevard had us buried in its tentacles, yet I felt no discomfort at becoming its prey. Take me for what I am, we belted carelessly during a miserably off-key RENT sing along. The blackened street could’ve swallowed up the Jeep right then and we would have kept singing.
***
Pittsburgh is where I attended my first wizard rock concert, twenty-eight minutes from my bedroom walls plastered left and right with beloved Harry Potter actors. I logged onto MySpace one day, found out The Remus Lupins were coming to town on July 31st, and did everything I could to find myself a ride down to Schenley Park. Eventually, Bobby and I were piled in a car on the road to pure bliss.
Bobby and I had always talked about how we wanted out so bad: out of our bedrooms, out of our high school, out of our circle of friends, out of our families, out of our relationships, out of our lives, but most of all, out of our city. Pittsburgh never really provided much for us, and for years we would stroll past magnificent skyscrapers and not bat an eyelash. Then came handfuls of wizard rock shows where we clasped our sweaty hands together whilst belting out lyrics that showcased our love for the boy who lived. After socializing with the bands that produced the songs we held so dear (“I freaking love your music. Can I give you a hug?” “Of course! I love you!”), our connection to the music pinned us against our city, leaving us unable to fly free even if we wanted to.
***
“Pittsburgh is one of my favorite places to play,” Matt of The Whomping Willows admits in the middle of one of his local sets, “because we don’t have to tell you to dance. You just feel it in your souls and you act upon it.”
Matt got it spot on, and it’s shocking to discover that not every city he stops to play at on his States-wide tours is this energetic. Does this make us better fans? Probably not. More memorable ones, however? Possibly. And if that’s all we can muster, I’ll be satisfied. We Pittsburghers don’t have to try hard to be remembered, and that knowledge seeps into my bloodstream and injects me with a woozy feeling that hardens into strength.
At Matt’s appreciative words there is a loud applause from the audience of twenty. It is this that makes every other concert's crowds seem abnormally lifeless. In mainstream mosh pits, it doesn’t feel as if there are hearts beating as one - or even two.
“Dude, stop fuckin’ spazzin out!” a tall burly guy in plaid yelled from behind me at The Used’s Pittsburgh show in 2009. The guy took a swig of beer and calmly surveyed the mosh pit a few feet away.
“Aight, lumberjack…” I muttered, jumping to the beat. My short stature meant a wide array of heads, hats, and hands obscured my favorite mainstream band. I was spazzing out? Did he see that flock of preteen girls fleeing the mosh pit screaming at the top of their lungs seconds ago?
I’m not sure whether it was him or not, but by the end of the night I was bruised in places I wasn’t used to feeling. Lazy trails of sweat slithered from my ponytail down the back of my shirt as I tried to ignore the craze of fans slapping each other’s faces to get closest to the stage.
“Just ignore him…” Bobby rolled his eyes, grabbing my hand and jumping alongside me. I recognized the playful opening chords of “All That I’ve Got” immediately and was thrust into the present, focusing on what really mattered – the music. That is, until a guy spilled beer all over his girlfriend outside the bathroom and laughed about it.
This wasn’t normal concert behavior. It couldn’t be. After so many wizard rock shows where love was preached and hugs were given out like elbows in the side in a mosh pit, I wasn’t used to this. It wasn’t right. This was normality, and I was hooked on the sturdy spontaneity of introducing myself to anyone at wizard rock shows just because I knew we automatically had a love for books in common. At The Used’s show, something didn’t settle right. I left empty – dazzled by their talent, but empty.
After seeing wizard rock bands play and being the catalyst for dance lines in so many audiences, I was inspired to start my own band, I Speak Tree.
Between my city’s bridges and its impressive glassy skyline lies the strength to make a stranger smile. And through my music, I wanted to be sturdy enough to be a cause, no matter how small, of that smile.
Freya, from the local Harry Potter group, and I will go months without communication, yet she handed me the opportunity to play my first show.
Tianna! Her email read one day. You need to do this!
Underneath was a forwarded message from Steph, the girl from Tonks and the Aurors, requesting an opening act at her Pittsburgh show. My cheeks flushed at the thought of Freya’s mind connecting that searching email with my amateur songs on MySpace.
At that first performance on the South Side, people clapped along and waved their cell phones high above their heads. Although the audience didn’t recognize the lyrics, the music was central to Harry Potter. As they clapped along to the beat, I saw the ‘Burgh truly acting without precedence.
A tweet from Freya after the show read, “I Speak Tree is amazing.”
Maybe I did cause a smile or two.
***
It is a few months back and I am standing atop the Carnegie Science Center’s lookout tower. I gaze through a telescope and spot Venus. Night air wraps around my waist, a sash concealing my fear of heights. I am in the “Most Livable City”. The “Mon” Incline across the river beams its fluorescent lights toward me. As they reflect through my glasses, I am pulled back in the moment with my Internet-friend-made-real-best-friend.
We reach “dahntahn” and the incline’s wheels judder and halt. Danny lets loose his breath. Station Square rattles my restless mind awake: the clinking of cutlery and wine glasses from the Hard Rock Café surrounds me on one side, set against the square Bar Louie with a consistently out-of-order photo booth separating the two.
The sun has set by the time we reach the Square. A fountain glows with colors, the water tails whipping and cascading toward the Hard Rock patio seats, spraying the bricks beneath. They go off every twenty minutes, soaring forty feet in the air to different musical themes several times a day.
The fountain sways along to everything from Disney to Christina Aguilera (who hails from the ‘Burgh itself). Danny, Mom, and I have arrived just in time for the Elvis Presley selection. It’s August in the city, and the thought of dancing in the damp breeze is devilishly tempting.
“You look like an angel…” From the loudspeakers, Elvis’s “Devil in Disguise” lassoes my hips toward the flamboyant fountain. I am momentarily airborne, my feet propelling toward the lights. Regardless of the fact that there are families, elderly couples, and tiny children watching, I dance. Without looking twice at the camera my giggling mother switched to record mode, I flail my arms to the beat. There is nothing more important than living this, here, now.
Whatever you call it – the City of Bridges, the Smoky City, or Steeler Country – is irrelevant.
To me, it will remain the place where I can gaze at the skyscraper neighbors, saying, “That’s the pavilion where I went to my first wizard rock show!” and “I used to be terrified of the Omnimax at that Science Center!” In one Incline ride, the three rivers below swallow my pride whole. From there it’ll flow out again, wiggling through the water cycle. A part of nature. Something I should have but didn’t see coming.
The rush of a train rumbles in my chest like a bass, just like the train that runs directly behind my house. I am home with Danny, whose mouth spreads wide with joy. His chipped front tooth is flawless and his fear is still seated on the Incline. His Buffalo heart has been claimed by the sturdy Steel City.
A few feet behind the fountain, I grip the gate lining the Monongahela. Mist drifts languidly up around the cool metal bars. I arch backward, relishing an upside down view of Station Square, and shimmy, clasping the gate with one hand – totally gracefully, too – until I topple toward the concrete.
Danny’s arms latch onto my shoulders. “Tianna!” he gives a huge open-mouthed laugh.
“Shut up!” I push him off, spin around, and gyrate my butt against the bars, swinging my hips to my heart’s content. I will look good dancing even if it means a near-fatal accident in the midst of it.
The Monongahela (“Mon”) Incline, the nation’s oldest cable car, brings travelers from the bottom of the hill to the top of the hill. Since 1870, it has transported twenty-three people at a time at six miles per hour up and down the hill. A decade earlier, the city’s industrialization was booming, magnetizing mainly German immigrants. The crowded industry pushed them to the top of “Coal Hill” (Mt. Washington). Transportation up and down the hill was difficult, so the Germans instinctively decided to bring their seilbahns (cable cars) to the city.
Taking a step back from the outlook binoculars, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania is the City of [446] Bridges, the Steel City, and home of the Steelers. We bleed black and yellow, the hues blending together to form the dirty brown gunk that settles at the bottom of the three rivers: the Monongahela and the Allegheny, which merge into the Ohio.
Above the Allegheny, the Three Sisters were the first self-anchored suspension bridges in the United States. Their top cables attach to the actual road as opposed to in the ground. Built during the Great Depression, these bridges loom over Pittsburghers, filling them with a strong sense of pride. The steel Three Sisters are the only trio of identical bridges, unusual for being built with cantilever methods, or having a beam of support at only one end. In other places, you might have to choose either precarious or sturdy to describe a structure: in Pittsburgh, we want – and get – the best of both worlds. Danny sees the Incline as dangerous, but I think of it as extremely durable, and maybe that’s the beauty of the contraption as well as the city. It’s spontaneous and unexpected, yet wholesome. Every glimpse of the Pittsburgh skyline is somehow different from the glance stolen previously.
Because the Incline gives such a great view of downtown as it snakes down the hill, it’s often the first place that pops into my mind along with a mental Post-It note of “you need to see this!” when my Internet friends tell me they’re coming to visit my city.
This is the nature of my meeting Danny: I accepted his MySpace friend request – he was a fellow Harry Potter fan and musician – and shortly after learned he was dating a mutual friend of ours, Liz. After that, we both attended Terminus, a Harry Potter convention in Chicago. After returning to the online world and joining a yearlong YouTube collaboration channel together, we decided a reunion was in order.
***
While we reunite we wait for a pink jumper clad child to crawl into an Incline seat and then we settle for the upmost bench. I’m squished between my mom and Danny.
Danny’s knuckles whiten around the wooden bench beneath us. A lumpy graffiti heart reads “A&L Forever!” The skyscrapers beyond the musty glass panes of the Incline barely catch my eye; the sights have become like next-door neighbors. My mother giggles at the way Danny wildly cranes his neck out the window to spot the Carnegie Science Center, the PPG (Pittsburgh Plate Glass Company) Building, which has a 60-foot Christmas tree in the center of its ice skating rink, and Heinz Field, the Steelers’ playground.
In the distance, the yellow Three Sisters bridges arch and bend under the humidity. I think of how sturdy they are, how they’ve been stretched across the Allegheny for almost a century. It reminds me of how my best friend Bobby has always been ever-present in my life.
***
I frantically stuffed clothes into a suitcase the night before I left for college. I put off most of my packing until several hours before I left to distract myself from how much I’d miss home. My mom and I planned to leave at six a.m. On top of the hole that would be left in my heart from the lack of familiar cats to greet me at the college entrance, I knew my bones would be aching with exhaustion once I got there.
Blinking back tears, trying to attach myself to numbness, I stumbled down the darkened stairwell to my kitchen, hoping to find solace somewhere in the empty cabinets. I wasn’t searching long through stale Triscuits before I got a text from Bobby saying, “I’m on my way with Taco Bell.” It’s something we’d always joked about, since neither of us could drive, that one day he would randomly show up at my house and together we would rid our problems with guacamole and mild sauce.
I didn’t reply, just awaited his arrival with anticipation: to eat, but more importantly to wrap my arms around my best friend one last time before separating for three months. We chowed down on our burritos, laughing at Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince on the TV and acting like nothing was about to change.
I can’t help but draw connections between the Three Sisters bridges and the people I associate with this city. It would take a lot to crush their impulsive spirits.
***
“What if this thing falls off the tracks?” Danny panics, his voice rising with fear. The women across from us look at him affectionately, as if he’s a child who’s lost his mother.
Danny is nineteen. He’s from Buffalo, New York, where the plains stretch for miles and the hills hide under a cloak of invisibility. They have grass; we have strong, square-grounded buildings. They grow shaky people like Danny, who can’t even picture the bottom of the hill; we grow sturdy and comforting people like my mother, who knows exactly where to look when I misplace my glasses. To Danny, this fit-for-the-elderly Incline ride is just as scary as the Phantom’s Revenge, Kennywood’s most dangerously thrilling rollercoaster. In actuality, we’re moving along at turtle speed.
“We won’t fall off, sweetheart. This thing has been running for hundreds of years,” my mom tells him, and one of the women nods in agreement.
“Oh my God, oh my God,” Danny grabs around for my hand as we roll down the hill. His big brown doe eyes are focused on the clouds, far, far away.
I let him latch onto me. Glossy buildings ahead reflect the setting sun, whose rays bounce off my glasses and back onto the Incline’s windows. The Monongahela River glistens, every few feet of her segmented by golden lights. Every Internet friend that comes to visit me makes my perspective on this city shift.
Pittsburgh has been voted “America’s Most Livable City” numerous times by business leaders like Forbes.com and The Economist. The “Livability” flows from a diverse cultural community, the fact that job opportunities aren’t completely invisible, highly available education, affordable housing, and accessible transportation. The language of Pittsburghese is an eccentric one, featuring words such as chipped ham and hoagies, yinz and jaggerbushes. “Keep a babushka around your little head to keep ahht the cold!” my father would warn before I’d head off to school in the mornings. “Hun, will you help me warsh the car when you get home?”
But the memories I have of the ‘Burgh go deeper than dialect.
***
It was my eighth birthday – August 7th, so hot that the skin on my arms could’ve peeled over my fingernails and ended up a boneless puddle on the concrete.
“I hope you know I’m gonna splash you with water, birthday girl!” my friend Jessica teased. I frowned and refrained from giggling: I wasn’t a girly girl.
Our floral Target bathing suits hugged our bellies, scrunchies clasped our ponytails tight, and excitement prodded us in the back, urging us into the backseat. When we arrived at the wave pool, however, a large brown sign announced its closure because of storms earlier in the day.
“I want to go in!” I grumbled, crossing my arms. That stupid sign wasn’t holding me back from my cool, beloved waves – not on my birthday!
“We’ll figure something out, sweetheart,” my mom took me by the shoulder and spun me in the direction of our Subaru.
When we got home, there was no need to take our bathing suits off – my sister and brother were already ready with a full bucket of water balloons to pelt us with! Within five minutes of having launched I had forgotten all about the wave pool’s closure: all that mattered was seeing how many of my friends I could get soaking wet. There was something about that day, something I found at home that I couldn’t find at my favorite place to swim, and that something planted an impulsive instinct within me.
***
“Thanks so much for helping us out, Tianna.”
As a high school senior I volunteered at the East End Food Co-Op (“Open to everyone, everyday”), home of local produce and sustainable groceries. The aroma of Jambalaya rice and curried tofu wriggled their way through the air into my nostrils. I checked in on my last day before an employee grabbed me by the arm and led me to the storage room for a secret vegetarian Thanksgiving feast. And I thought my last day volunteering would be just another day of stocking beans!
I sat on a plastic bench and stuffed my face full of Tofurky and potatoes before venturing back out into the organic chaos.
“Aisle five for the vegan lip balm,” I told the pretty white-haired girl with plugs in her ears who approached me while I stocked boxes of chai tea. At the end of my third hour, I would hurry back to the “Produce Pit” and take peppers and potatoes that were perfectly fine but deemed too damaged to be sold. With the unprocessed, natural food came an unprocessed, natural atmosphere where everyone spoke in a tone that left me feeling warm despite the winter winds.
Across the neighboring Liberty Bridge and east down 71B, you’ll find the Cathedral of Learning, which is the centerpiece of the University of Pittsburgh. This forty-two-floor building has served as a hang out for my friends and I on numerous occasions. Sometimes we’ll film Harry Potter-themed music videos; other times we’ll just stroll around the old, pictorial building.
During the making of the Cathedral in 1926, the Great Depression-struck builders found themselves in debt. An international fundraiser was created where various countries sent money to fund this Gothic Revival building. As a result, there are twenty-seven nationality rooms dedicated to each contributor. In the words of the tenth University of Pittsburgh Chancellor John Gabbert Bowman, “The building was to be more than a schoolhouse; it was to be a symbol of the life that Pittsburgh through the years had wanted to live.” This rings very true, and I can’t help but agree that Pittsburgh has its own wants: the high arches and Indiana limestone under my feet makes me feel as if I’m in a postcard. Each time I visit, it’s hard not to dig for my digital camera and capture the aged nooks and crannies, sure that so many before me have done the same.
In times such as these, I feel like a tourist in my own city. From the “Mon” Incline to this magnificent education palace, Pittsburgh houses my every whimsical want. If I were to say, “Let’s go look at dead birds with their eyes stuffed full of cotton!” the sentence wouldn’t have to be fully out of my mouth before we’d be in the car on our way to the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. Other times, such as when my online friends visit my city, it feels as if I am sucked into the city itself, as if the city built me and parts of my heritage are ground into the steel mills.
Since the months leading up to the Harry Potter convention Terminus in 2008, I’ve made connections with people who, before the convention, were only Internet friends – friends I had strong relationships with, yet only existed online. A select few came to Pittsburgh to visit me, however. They slept on my bedroom floor, let me cook vegan food for them, and whipped out their cameras at all the ‘Burgh sights.
Ivy, a girl from southwest Virginia with a triangular smile, was my first Internet friend. We bonded on MySpace over our mutual Harry Potter addiction, and she visited me for the whole month of July before Terminus. We decided to make this happen spur-of-the-online-moment a couple weeks before she showed up at my house on the hill with a hug tight enough to crack my back.
I ended up taking her to Mt. Washington, where she held back squeals of fear on the Incline, but the skyline wasn’t as memorable as she was. She had a southern way of speaking that tugged at the corners of my lips, daring them to curve into a smile.
“Do you want to go to the pool sometime?” I asked Ivy in an attempt at taking her mind off the apparently horrid screeching of the Incline’s breaks down the 370-foot hill.
Her blonde brows knitted together. “What’s that?”
“Like, a swimming pool?” I clarified, not sure what I said wrong.
“Ohhh, the po-ell!”
I erupted in laughter, wondering if maybe my accent was the confusing one.
In the midst of dying each other’s hair red one night, we decided to make a quick Wal-Mart trip to pick up iron-on letters for the T-shirts we wanted to make in celebration of Ivy’s first wizard rock concert in the ‘Burgh.
“This is ridiculous. When are we going back?” Ivy groaned with a blue plastic bag on her head, retaining heat while her hair turned a deep burgundy color.
“I don’t know,” I laughed. “When we find the right letters!” my mouth ached from smiling as I arched off the dirty Wal-Mart floor, lunging for a “G” or a “Y” – how many people wanted to spell “Ginny”, really?
When Ivy left Pittsburgh, she took a piece of me with her, but she gave me something as well. She revived within me an unstructured courage to say whatever I wanted, how I wanted it, whenever I wanted to – after all, everyone has different accents.
***
After a Paramore and No Doubt concert in the summer of 2009 I got lost in Squirrel Hill at two a.m. with another Internet friend, Alex, and his Cinderella license – we were out three hours past the underage drivers’ curfew limitation.
“Guys, where do I turn?” Alex steered away from a swerving car.
“Up here… No, here. No, maybe try right there.” Bobby tried his best not to sound clueless from the backseat. I chewed on my chocolate chip cookie from the East End Food Co-Op and tried to summon the homey smells that would drag reassuring comfort along with them.
“Yeah, that’s Boulevard of the Allies!” I, for once, felt totally in control of my navigational skills. And then… “It’s not? Shit...”
As we flew around the curbs I felt weightless, like I was running for my life while still sitting shotgun. The heated night air tangled my hair in its claws, tempting me, whistling and chanting, “why aren’t you worried, child?” I didn’t know the answer, and I didn’t care for it. Freedom is as freedom does.
Beechwood Boulevard had us buried in its tentacles, yet I felt no discomfort at becoming its prey. Take me for what I am, we belted carelessly during a miserably off-key RENT sing along. The blackened street could’ve swallowed up the Jeep right then and we would have kept singing.
***
Pittsburgh is where I attended my first wizard rock concert, twenty-eight minutes from my bedroom walls plastered left and right with beloved Harry Potter actors. I logged onto MySpace one day, found out The Remus Lupins were coming to town on July 31st, and did everything I could to find myself a ride down to Schenley Park. Eventually, Bobby and I were piled in a car on the road to pure bliss.
Bobby and I had always talked about how we wanted out so bad: out of our bedrooms, out of our high school, out of our circle of friends, out of our families, out of our relationships, out of our lives, but most of all, out of our city. Pittsburgh never really provided much for us, and for years we would stroll past magnificent skyscrapers and not bat an eyelash. Then came handfuls of wizard rock shows where we clasped our sweaty hands together whilst belting out lyrics that showcased our love for the boy who lived. After socializing with the bands that produced the songs we held so dear (“I freaking love your music. Can I give you a hug?” “Of course! I love you!”), our connection to the music pinned us against our city, leaving us unable to fly free even if we wanted to.
***
“Pittsburgh is one of my favorite places to play,” Matt of The Whomping Willows admits in the middle of one of his local sets, “because we don’t have to tell you to dance. You just feel it in your souls and you act upon it.”
Matt got it spot on, and it’s shocking to discover that not every city he stops to play at on his States-wide tours is this energetic. Does this make us better fans? Probably not. More memorable ones, however? Possibly. And if that’s all we can muster, I’ll be satisfied. We Pittsburghers don’t have to try hard to be remembered, and that knowledge seeps into my bloodstream and injects me with a woozy feeling that hardens into strength.
At Matt’s appreciative words there is a loud applause from the audience of twenty. It is this that makes every other concert's crowds seem abnormally lifeless. In mainstream mosh pits, it doesn’t feel as if there are hearts beating as one - or even two.
“Dude, stop fuckin’ spazzin out!” a tall burly guy in plaid yelled from behind me at The Used’s Pittsburgh show in 2009. The guy took a swig of beer and calmly surveyed the mosh pit a few feet away.
“Aight, lumberjack…” I muttered, jumping to the beat. My short stature meant a wide array of heads, hats, and hands obscured my favorite mainstream band. I was spazzing out? Did he see that flock of preteen girls fleeing the mosh pit screaming at the top of their lungs seconds ago?
I’m not sure whether it was him or not, but by the end of the night I was bruised in places I wasn’t used to feeling. Lazy trails of sweat slithered from my ponytail down the back of my shirt as I tried to ignore the craze of fans slapping each other’s faces to get closest to the stage.
“Just ignore him…” Bobby rolled his eyes, grabbing my hand and jumping alongside me. I recognized the playful opening chords of “All That I’ve Got” immediately and was thrust into the present, focusing on what really mattered – the music. That is, until a guy spilled beer all over his girlfriend outside the bathroom and laughed about it.
This wasn’t normal concert behavior. It couldn’t be. After so many wizard rock shows where love was preached and hugs were given out like elbows in the side in a mosh pit, I wasn’t used to this. It wasn’t right. This was normality, and I was hooked on the sturdy spontaneity of introducing myself to anyone at wizard rock shows just because I knew we automatically had a love for books in common. At The Used’s show, something didn’t settle right. I left empty – dazzled by their talent, but empty.
After seeing wizard rock bands play and being the catalyst for dance lines in so many audiences, I was inspired to start my own band, I Speak Tree.
Between my city’s bridges and its impressive glassy skyline lies the strength to make a stranger smile. And through my music, I wanted to be sturdy enough to be a cause, no matter how small, of that smile.
Freya, from the local Harry Potter group, and I will go months without communication, yet she handed me the opportunity to play my first show.
Tianna! Her email read one day. You need to do this!
Underneath was a forwarded message from Steph, the girl from Tonks and the Aurors, requesting an opening act at her Pittsburgh show. My cheeks flushed at the thought of Freya’s mind connecting that searching email with my amateur songs on MySpace.
At that first performance on the South Side, people clapped along and waved their cell phones high above their heads. Although the audience didn’t recognize the lyrics, the music was central to Harry Potter. As they clapped along to the beat, I saw the ‘Burgh truly acting without precedence.
A tweet from Freya after the show read, “I Speak Tree is amazing.”
Maybe I did cause a smile or two.
***
It is a few months back and I am standing atop the Carnegie Science Center’s lookout tower. I gaze through a telescope and spot Venus. Night air wraps around my waist, a sash concealing my fear of heights. I am in the “Most Livable City”. The “Mon” Incline across the river beams its fluorescent lights toward me. As they reflect through my glasses, I am pulled back in the moment with my Internet-friend-made-real-best-friend.
We reach “dahntahn” and the incline’s wheels judder and halt. Danny lets loose his breath. Station Square rattles my restless mind awake: the clinking of cutlery and wine glasses from the Hard Rock Café surrounds me on one side, set against the square Bar Louie with a consistently out-of-order photo booth separating the two.
The sun has set by the time we reach the Square. A fountain glows with colors, the water tails whipping and cascading toward the Hard Rock patio seats, spraying the bricks beneath. They go off every twenty minutes, soaring forty feet in the air to different musical themes several times a day.
The fountain sways along to everything from Disney to Christina Aguilera (who hails from the ‘Burgh itself). Danny, Mom, and I have arrived just in time for the Elvis Presley selection. It’s August in the city, and the thought of dancing in the damp breeze is devilishly tempting.
“You look like an angel…” From the loudspeakers, Elvis’s “Devil in Disguise” lassoes my hips toward the flamboyant fountain. I am momentarily airborne, my feet propelling toward the lights. Regardless of the fact that there are families, elderly couples, and tiny children watching, I dance. Without looking twice at the camera my giggling mother switched to record mode, I flail my arms to the beat. There is nothing more important than living this, here, now.
Whatever you call it – the City of Bridges, the Smoky City, or Steeler Country – is irrelevant.
To me, it will remain the place where I can gaze at the skyscraper neighbors, saying, “That’s the pavilion where I went to my first wizard rock show!” and “I used to be terrified of the Omnimax at that Science Center!” In one Incline ride, the three rivers below swallow my pride whole. From there it’ll flow out again, wiggling through the water cycle. A part of nature. Something I should have but didn’t see coming.
The rush of a train rumbles in my chest like a bass, just like the train that runs directly behind my house. I am home with Danny, whose mouth spreads wide with joy. His chipped front tooth is flawless and his fear is still seated on the Incline. His Buffalo heart has been claimed by the sturdy Steel City.
A few feet behind the fountain, I grip the gate lining the Monongahela. Mist drifts languidly up around the cool metal bars. I arch backward, relishing an upside down view of Station Square, and shimmy, clasping the gate with one hand – totally gracefully, too – until I topple toward the concrete.
Danny’s arms latch onto my shoulders. “Tianna!” he gives a huge open-mouthed laugh.
“Shut up!” I push him off, spin around, and gyrate my butt against the bars, swinging my hips to my heart’s content. I will look good dancing even if it means a near-fatal accident in the midst of it.
08 December 2011
Date whoever the fuck you want.
This is my response to the ever so popular “Date a girl who reads”/”Date an illiterate girl” articles.
Date whoever the fuck you want. You can find them anywhere. They will either be sipping from a wide range of beverages, or not drinking at all. Find them in the nightclub, in the library, at school, at your next door neighbor’s house. Realize that even if she doesn’t know who the hell James Joyce is, it doesn’t make her stupid. And if she does pretend, it doesn’t make her pretentious.
Date whoever the fuck you want, because chances are, they’re not going to call you out on having a type. Search for him or her in the low shadow of the concert hall or in the fluorescent lighting backstage. Understand that just because someone doesn’t read regularly doesn’t mean they’re illiterate. Whoever the fuck you choose will be grateful, because you, my friend, are a paragon of integrity. Don’t know what that means? Well, clearly, you aren’t a girl who reads.
Whoever the fuck you choose will not have a type to comply with, because they will be their own person. They will not be filed under any superficial category, for contrary to popular belief, there is a plethora of people out there who do not strictly fit under either “bookworm” or “partygoer.” She or he might be wearing a short skirt or a full tuxedo. They might be a stripper. They might be a librarian. They might be both.
You will propose to them by doing whatever the fuck you want. Whenever the fuck you want. However the fuck you want. But don’t do it over Skype. (What the fuck? Why would a girl who reads want to be proposed to over Skype? No.) Also, if your girl is reciting Keats under her breath like some sort of psycho I’m worried.
Understand that if you choose a girl who reads, it doesn’t mean that she automatically understands people. If you find whoever the fuck you want, keep them close. Hopefully, they will cherish the fact that you chose them for who they are and not what they do. Whoever the fuck you choose will understand that people develop, as well, and they will be proud of you for getting past the utterly judgmental state of “I’m solely looking for someone who does/does not read.”
Date whoever the fuck you want, because you deserve it. After all this time of reading all these blogs about what kind of attitude the girl you date should possess, you get a break. Go choose on your own. Don’t subscribe to bullshit. Date whoever the fuck you want, because your mind wants what it fucking wants.
Or better yet, don’t date anyone at all.
Date whoever the fuck you want. You can find them anywhere. They will either be sipping from a wide range of beverages, or not drinking at all. Find them in the nightclub, in the library, at school, at your next door neighbor’s house. Realize that even if she doesn’t know who the hell James Joyce is, it doesn’t make her stupid. And if she does pretend, it doesn’t make her pretentious.
Date whoever the fuck you want, because chances are, they’re not going to call you out on having a type. Search for him or her in the low shadow of the concert hall or in the fluorescent lighting backstage. Understand that just because someone doesn’t read regularly doesn’t mean they’re illiterate. Whoever the fuck you choose will be grateful, because you, my friend, are a paragon of integrity. Don’t know what that means? Well, clearly, you aren’t a girl who reads.
Whoever the fuck you choose will not have a type to comply with, because they will be their own person. They will not be filed under any superficial category, for contrary to popular belief, there is a plethora of people out there who do not strictly fit under either “bookworm” or “partygoer.” She or he might be wearing a short skirt or a full tuxedo. They might be a stripper. They might be a librarian. They might be both.
You will propose to them by doing whatever the fuck you want. Whenever the fuck you want. However the fuck you want. But don’t do it over Skype. (What the fuck? Why would a girl who reads want to be proposed to over Skype? No.) Also, if your girl is reciting Keats under her breath like some sort of psycho I’m worried.
Understand that if you choose a girl who reads, it doesn’t mean that she automatically understands people. If you find whoever the fuck you want, keep them close. Hopefully, they will cherish the fact that you chose them for who they are and not what they do. Whoever the fuck you choose will understand that people develop, as well, and they will be proud of you for getting past the utterly judgmental state of “I’m solely looking for someone who does/does not read.”
Date whoever the fuck you want, because you deserve it. After all this time of reading all these blogs about what kind of attitude the girl you date should possess, you get a break. Go choose on your own. Don’t subscribe to bullshit. Date whoever the fuck you want, because your mind wants what it fucking wants.
Or better yet, don’t date anyone at all.
06 December 2011
STRESSBLOG
Now that my first true college finals (as opposed to the fake college finals I took at community college?) are approaching, my writing proficiency portfolio is due by Saturday, the DC Yule Ball is Friday, my last art class is tomorrow and I'll be putting that portfolio all night, and this is a run on sentence...
Well, NOW I've decided that amidst the procrastination, it is a good time to STRESSBLOG. STRESSBLOG is in ALL CAPS because STRESSBLOG insinuates that I am stressed and blogging. Which I am. I know I need to stop this instant. My memoir for nonfiction class is calling my name. This girl in the library needs to stop talking so loud. I got very excited at the idea of the "quiet zone" when finals time came along, but this is not a quiet zone. It is a war zone. It is a STRESSBLOG war zone of little soldiers at their carbon copy computers, shoved in their carbon copy carrels (is that how you spell the computer desk object thing that traps you inside like a cell?)
The soldiers who are marching on the thesis line are hunched over their keyboards, tapping away bullshit to store for later use. It could help them become a doctor. It could help them become a publisher. Or it could just help them graduate and therefore be in debt. Then there's the c.) all of the above option, but no one thinks of that come crunch time.
The lazier fighters, the ones who will probably get executed by the time they stomp forward to the thesis line, are too busy on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, refreshing their mail accounts, and STRESSBLOGing. People want to know about their lives SO much that they curl into little balls in their faded, mysteriously dirty orange womb chairs and try to escape the pressure. Why do work when they can focus on their own life and talk about the things that have been affecting them as if they're #1 on everyone's list?
Since my last blog post, I've been elected co-president of Prism, the gay club here, with my friend Carina. I'm pretty excited, but also kind of nervous. Prism presidents lead the discussion each week with the group, and once the actual president was absent so Carina and I did it. And it was kind of scary cause people have opinions and opinions are scary. Especially when they're WRONG. Just kidding. Kind of. We're submitting our club budget soon (yeah, yeah, we're late as hell), and gearing up for a Drag Ball in Gaypril. Yaaay!
Here I am, comfortably situated in middle of the soldiers, not quite to the thesis line but not at the stumbling end. I know where I'm going, I've just got to get there. And I guess that's a lot better than a lot of people come finals time. Before I end this blog I also need to stress how proud I am of my college for having four Twitters dedicated to 3 buildings and a road on campus.
I'm living the awesome life.
This turned out to be less of a STRESSBLOG than a MAYBEIMNOTSOSTRESSEDIMJUSTCOMPLAINING blog. But I hope you liked it anyway.
Metal smiles and Hagrid hugs,
Tianna
Well, NOW I've decided that amidst the procrastination, it is a good time to STRESSBLOG. STRESSBLOG is in ALL CAPS because STRESSBLOG insinuates that I am stressed and blogging. Which I am. I know I need to stop this instant. My memoir for nonfiction class is calling my name. This girl in the library needs to stop talking so loud. I got very excited at the idea of the "quiet zone" when finals time came along, but this is not a quiet zone. It is a war zone. It is a STRESSBLOG war zone of little soldiers at their carbon copy computers, shoved in their carbon copy carrels (is that how you spell the computer desk object thing that traps you inside like a cell?)
The soldiers who are marching on the thesis line are hunched over their keyboards, tapping away bullshit to store for later use. It could help them become a doctor. It could help them become a publisher. Or it could just help them graduate and therefore be in debt. Then there's the c.) all of the above option, but no one thinks of that come crunch time.
The lazier fighters, the ones who will probably get executed by the time they stomp forward to the thesis line, are too busy on Tumblr, Facebook, Twitter, Etsy, refreshing their mail accounts, and STRESSBLOGing. People want to know about their lives SO much that they curl into little balls in their faded, mysteriously dirty orange womb chairs and try to escape the pressure. Why do work when they can focus on their own life and talk about the things that have been affecting them as if they're #1 on everyone's list?
Since my last blog post, I've been elected co-president of Prism, the gay club here, with my friend Carina. I'm pretty excited, but also kind of nervous. Prism presidents lead the discussion each week with the group, and once the actual president was absent so Carina and I did it. And it was kind of scary cause people have opinions and opinions are scary. Especially when they're WRONG. Just kidding. Kind of. We're submitting our club budget soon (yeah, yeah, we're late as hell), and gearing up for a Drag Ball in Gaypril. Yaaay!
Here I am, comfortably situated in middle of the soldiers, not quite to the thesis line but not at the stumbling end. I know where I'm going, I've just got to get there. And I guess that's a lot better than a lot of people come finals time. Before I end this blog I also need to stress how proud I am of my college for having four Twitters dedicated to 3 buildings and a road on campus.
I'm living the awesome life.
This turned out to be less of a STRESSBLOG than a MAYBEIMNOTSOSTRESSEDIMJUSTCOMPLAINING blog. But I hope you liked it anyway.
Metal smiles and Hagrid hugs,
Tianna
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