i may have forgotten about the toilet

subtitle: crash box

Life may be like a recyclable plastic bottle of name-brand diet soda, full of carbonation and promise; yet you open it up, and what's inside that yellow lid? "Sorry, you are not a winner."

Gee, thanks.

I think I made a mistake.

Life is not all that bad. Sometimes, all of a sudden, you unscrew that bad boy's lid and you get something miraculous: gobbledygook.

A code. Something to give a little white typing box on the soda manufacturer's website some significance.

I love codes.

Codes make you feel special, included, knowledgeable. Or despised and isolated.

Codes twist communication.

You can crack codes. I want to crack things sometimes.

Codes can grant meaning or take it away.

Codes represent everything I like about the American dream.

You don't have to prove yourself with a code; you just have to hide.

I don't know that I ever figured I'd be this jaded or this heartsick of being here, of having to deal with all this stuff and having to take it too personally. I think it's a side effect of empathy; I hate causing other people pain or annoyance and I tend to really beat myself up about it if I do.

I'd like to know who wins if I'm in the doldrums. I'd really like to know if anybody gets a runner's high off of that so I can beat them up and take their lunch money and then go back to being in the doldrums.

And I'd really like to live out of myself. I'd like to for once be concerned with something other than variations on the pronoun "I". I'm really tired of it.




Remember when life was funny? Remember when you ate Nutella out of the jar with a spoon? When it didn't matter?

I get up in the morning to remember French

So... I was thinking about what I look forward to. What about my busy, hectic life is worth keeping.

Because I'm pretty tired of most of it. I'm trying to stay positive--but what's positive about being unfulfilled?

What I look forward to, when I get up in the morning, is doing my Playwriting homework; trying, in my own pathetic way, to learn German; trying, in my own pathetic way, to not forget French while keeping my roommate unaware of how really bad I am at it; spending a few minutes with my friends; going to the Vault on the weekends; seeing what the heck my bedhair is up to.

And largely, the rest of my life is a source of stress.

It's not that I hate theatre or that I'm not dedicated to it. I love thinking about my thesis; I love writing theatre; I love messing around in props.

But junior year is a madhouse.

Maybe I'm not a good advertisement for the school since I'm putting this on a public blog. To that I say, whatever. I'm Claire. I'm as good an advertisement as you're going to get.

I just made a 50 on a test. A 50. I'm positive this is the lowest grade I have ever made on any assignment.

Go me. Go school advertisement.

I never wanted to be jaded. I don't think I am, really; I just need more destressors, a larger day planner, Henry Tilney...

So yeah. I may have gained a sister.

I think it's happening.

My roommate and I have gotten to that sleepless point in the year in which we are OK with slapping each other upside the head with the truth.

And, boy, do we need reality checks from time to time. I need reality checks much more often because I am the flaky one. I am definitely the Oscar to her Felix.

Recently, she's been telling me to go to the French class that I don't really have because I'm auditing it. There's a couple of phenomenal reasons why she's been telling me to do this. The first is that I don't go all that often. (I didn't go today. Whoops. I swear up and down I'll go on Wednesday.) The second is that I really do want to achieve intermediate/advanced competency in French, and she knows--as well as I do--that the only way to do that is to buckle down, learn it, and be ready for an advanced French class next semester.

I apologize for blowing off the subjunctive, Felix. I promise I'll practice it.

It's funny how people affect your life; without my roommate to provoke me with her excellent bilingual example, I might not have realized so soon how much I really need languages in my life.
Without the knowledge that my roommate might dramaturg me out of a job in her spare time (as she is, first and foremost, a performer) would I be so keen on graduating with honors and compiling the most stellar portfolio ever to woo my dream graduate schools?

But we do not merely nurse petty rivalries; we also support each other. I can always count on my roommate to remind me that the faculty nods when I speak. I'm really, really grateful for that.

To her, I'm tiny and self-motivated. She introduced me to at least half of the artists on the mix playlist and fills my life with pancakes. I can't help but be appreciative.

Break lots of legs on your big audition! I'm really, really proud of you and I hope Easter Break is as restful as you want it to be.


(In other news, I just put a playlist up on my blogspot. Right now, it's all French songs. The reason for this is that none of my favorite German artists were on the website; color me sad. I expect my biological sister to give all of the songs a chance. Or else.)

Bring on the noise; bring on the Flood.

Dear Wikipedia.org,
I was so convinced that I was the first person ever to really pursue the connections between Samuel Beckett's play Endgame and Noah's Flood; you told me I was mistaken. It was a sloppy beginning to a lackluster day in which I was deprived of any release of my various frustrations.

We're taking a break.

Love,
Claire

Dear Football Player,
Friday is R&B Night in the computer lab. You are two days too early.

We're taking a break.

Love,
Claire

Dear Blue Styrofoam,
Hi, I'm Claire; I'm supposed to be carving 150 SQUARE feet of you into props--not 150 REGULAR feet as I'd so desperately hoped. Whoknew?

We are back on.

Love,
Claire

And then I don't feel so bad?

It's days like this that I'm ultimately thankful that I do not have the power to incinerate with a glance.

Oh, I would if I could. The entire theatre would be gone, as well as several students; my chemistry textbook would certainly not survive the heat, and the world might also go down in flames.

Crap ball change. I left my backpack in the cafeteria. I hope some thugly lowlife hasn't made off with it. Oh well. Have fun with my chemistry textbook, thugly lowlife, but the bookstore won't give you beans for it.

So then I might regret burning the earth. Well, I'd mostly regret it.

So I had a bad day. That's what that comes down to. I engaged in petty putainery. I did not stifle my urge to correct stupid people, even though I knew it would be tactless and make them feel more stupid. Rather, I embraced the urge. I went with it. I was a horrible person.

I had a mini-breakdown; I found out later that one of my classmates had a similar one. I wish we'd had ours together. It might have saved time.

When the dog bites, when the bee stings, Rodgers and Hammerstein and Julie Andrews suggest thinking of a few of my favorite things. So here goes.

The Swiss Alps.

West Side Story.

Wodehouse.

Breakfast of Champions--both Wheaties and the Kurt Vonnegut book.

Languages.

Rasmus.

Making fun of mullets.

Making fun of millet.

Making fun of mittens.

Making fun of non-human-hair weave.

DICK VAN DYKE.

Jane Austen.

Kiwi.

Yes. Have no fear--I would spare the earth for kiwi, the Alps and Jeeves and Wooster.

How to Be Frugal and Experience Life in Italy Without Being Robbed By Gypsies or Going Crazy... a Reflective

A. 1) Don't forget that you are in Italy--and may never go there again. Therefore, see exactly what you want to see. I studied Michelangelo for about a zillion years; I really wanted to see the collections of his sculptures at the Academia in Florence but I let time and wealth constraints dominate my judgement and I went to the Palazzo Pitti instead. Of course, the Palazzo Pitti, a Renaissance palace, was great; it had Boticellis and Raphaels and Titians out the wazoo, not to mention amazing architecture, which is one of my favorite things about visiting Italy, but in the end, I have a much larger emotional investment in Michelangelo than in the Medicis. Florence is famous for its very intricate replicas, but apparently the copy of David that I saw outside the Palazzo Vecchio just makes you notice his big hands, and the original makes you cry.

Of course, this also means I have to visit Florence again, which I am ok with; I also have to visit Rome again... and I'd like to visit Bologna again, but that's another story.

A. 2) Be cautious, but don't get hung up on fear of getting pickpocketed. I think this also has to do with the fact that I did not go in tourist season, but I never had even a near-burgled experience. By the way, I developed and highly recommend the Fake Romantic Couple method of protecting your money while in crowds; wear one of those little zippy things underneath your clothes to put your important info and the bulk of your money in, and then put about 10 or 20 euros into your right pocket. Then take the left arm of a gay male friend. Of course you can easily substitute the Fake Romantic Couple method with the Real Romantic Couple method by replacing the gay male friend with an actual romantic entanglement.

A. 3) Find out what the plural of "euro" is before you go to Italy and spend money. And get ready--it'll be a bumpy, controversial ride.

A. 4) Know at least a few words of Italian before you go to Italy.

A. 5) Your new favorite alcoholic beverage is a caipiroska. A caipiroska, developed after the caipirinha, the national drink of Brazil, is popular in Europe but rare in the States and consists of pure vodka plus lots of sugar plus lots of lime or lemon plus lots of ice. Therefore, one will make you happy. Two will make you tipsy. Three will make you broke. So, if you're like me, you only have one. But you have to order one.

A. 6) Don't be afraid to have new experiences. Make eye contact with a Communist. Try pate. Order caffe corretto grappa. You will probably not finish it but you will be able to say you had Italian moonshine in your turbo coffee. Try to communicate with your bus driver who doesn't speak a lot of English. You might find out you had the same oral surgery and will be able to communicate by pointing to the titanium plates in your face and miming rubber bands with "ping" sound effects.

A. 7) Don't ever pay 2,50 E for two scoops of gelato. You can find 1,90 E gelato somewhere else. (Italy, incidentally, is a very expensive country. You should probably never live there. The euro did uncharacteristically crazy things to their economy and I think the lira is still somewhere in the land of dead money crying its eyes out.)

A. 8) You know those people who tell you never to spend money in Venice? They're so right!