Shakespearean Rooms

In my last Shakespeare class of the semester, Professor Mallette mentioned how when there was a scene in a bedroom, it was almost always a woman's domain.

It made me wonder, if you wandered around campus, or your own home, which rooms are masculine and which are feminine?

My room at school is female.
My room at home is male.
The library is female.
The chapel is female.


...I'm struggling to find something that I think is male. Maybe the science buildings? or is that stereotypical?

ZOMBIES!

Again, I know our apocalyptic unit is over, but I'm still fascinated by it. Also, my friend has been addicted to L4D (Left 4 Dead) so I decided to see what it was all about. And by that, I mean I went to it's wikipedia page.

It's a first-person shooter game in a post-apocalyptic zombie world.

My cup of tea.

Upon reading, I found this quote from a creator that relates to our discussion on the change of the source of zombie-ism, from mystic witchcraft to potent virus:

"Even though we obviously pushed well beyond the realm of believability with many of our "boss" infected, the core idea of a mind-destroying, civilization-collapsing pathogen is more horrifying to me than magically animated corpses, precisely because it is plausible. Rabies is a good example of a pathogen that can turn a loyal, friendly, protective family pet into a slavering attack machine. It's a virus that reprograms the behaviors of a complex animal – a mammal, in fact. What if something similar happened to humans? Left 4 Dead is one possible answer."

-Mike Booth

I am fascinated by zombies. I don't watch many horror movies at all, but if there are zombies, I'm always down. Weird.

males and females

This isn't necessarily environmental but I thought of the "male/female" dichotomy and their connotations at work today.

I am the properties master at the theater, however I spent two years on shop crew. I know my way around jig saws, chop saws, screw guns, squares, and levels. This year, shop crew is full of male newbies who are unaware of my history.

I was taking down a curtain that I had made of burlap stapled in pleats to a plank of wood. It was hanging in a very tricky spot between two walls, with about three inches of work space. I had taken out all the screws when one of them wouldn't come out of the plank of wood, jamming it between the two walls. I struggled with it for less than a minute when one of the boys came over and asked if I needed assistance. I didn't want to be rude, so I explained the problem with the screw and offered him the screw gun. Instead, he seized the plank of wood and yanked it downward, snapping the screw and freeing the curtain. "Or....there's....that.....okay..." I said as he handed me the 1x4, smirking.

I realize he was just being nice and trying to help, but every time I'm working on something in the shop, all of those boys fly to my rescue, even when I don't need it. However, I had a male coworker who was struggling with trimming the top of a plastic bucket. He tried multiple tools, and no one in the shop offered to help.

I'm not upset, and I'm not going to be indignant. I can't help but smile when they insist on "helping" me, even though I've spent more time around the theater power tools than they have.

prom

my friends and I took our prom pictures in weird places instead of the conservatory koi pond or the rose gardens or the new gazebo in the park.

we settled on a construction site across from a cemetery....

territory

It's funny to watch the athletes practicing in the field outside of Hixon come in to use the bathroom. Their faces convey confusion, curiosity, hesitance, submission, and a little panic. They never know where to go, and I don't blame them: the theater has a confusing lay out. There are always strange things being built, loud scary noises, and a ton of traffic on paths that are far too narrow to accommodate them. I confess, we tend to give people we don't recognize looks that say, "What are you doing here?" if they don't state their business immediately. People stop and look up from their work, as if we were a colony of meerkats standing on our hind legs and staring at an intruder. They say a few words about a bathroom, and we all point. Maybe someone will say, "Down that hallway." They think that when they leave we'll talk about them, and sometimes we do.

We are all animals, no matter what we build or create or teach ourselves.

Experiments In Where The Heart Is

What is it about not being at home that just makes you exhausted?

I spent the entire weekend in places I didn't technically live. The first was a friends apartment downtown and the second was a friend's home with her family. When I finally got back to my room on tonight, I felt this strange sense of relief despite my return meaning a return to homework that needed doing, calls that needed to be made, and a mountain of laundry.

The contrast between the two homes I stayed in this weekend was interesting. Normally, I would feel much more comfortable in an environment that belonged entirely to my friend, but this time, I loved being with my other friend's family. And not just because her golden retriever/cocker spaniel mix looked exactly like the dog I grew up with. It felt happy and comfortable, where my high school friend's apartment was mismatched and frankly kind of filthy. I struggled not to tell her how to keep her dog under control when it climbed all over her. No one likes a Captain Bossy Boots.

I kept wondering what it was about being with my other friend's family that made me feel so much happier. Normally I'm worried about looking like a suitable friend to the parents, but watching Law and Order with her mom while we made snarky comments made me feel like I'd actually been home.

This weekend was an interesting experimentation in what constitutes a home.

Alabaster Windows

It's not that religion hasn't come up before in class, but all of our discussions about the apocalypse made me think of my brief encounters with my own concept of faith. Religion is often connected to place, and while I've always felt pseudo-Kierkegaardian and agnostic about my own, this cathedral in Orvieto, Italy, is truly the only place I can say Christianity made sense to me.

And then we left. I've always wondered what it was that made me feel that way for less than ten seconds.

Smoke Not On The Water

Today I went downtown to pick up my Spanish visa for next semester, and when leaving Ogilvie, the strangest thing happened.

Our train passed through a huge, impossibly thick cloud of smoke. I looked around frantically for the source, assuming that a building had to be burning to give off that amount of smoke. No one else seemed to notice it. After ten seconds, we were completely clear of it.

It was then that I realized I had been trying desperately to smell it, as if to prove its existence.

Crows

This morning, my alarm clock is not what woke me. It was the cawing of a murder of crows in the trees outside my window. I expected to wake up in my own bed at home, where crows like to perch in the oak tree that shades the entirety of our front lawn.

A line from Lady Macbeth popped into my head as I sat up:

"The raven himself is hoarse
That croaks the fatal entrance of Duncan
Under my battlements."

Macbeth, Act One, Scene Five

I sure hope the king of Scotland keeps his distance from Harlan.

That's Not The Milk Carton...

Today I was talking with a friend about how the weather this weekend was giving us good parts of two sensory worlds. We got to smell the decaying leaves and stomp them with that satisfying crackle, while wearing sandals and for once, not bitterly cursing the November breeze that lifted our hair from our shoulders.

Though I was reminded of the strange sensory experience of expecting one thing and getting another. On friday, when I left my building wearing a pea coat, I tightened my stomach muscles and held my breath, braced for cold. Five seconds without shock left me in a kind of daze. It didn't seem right, and for a moment it was as though I had been violently awakened from a realistic dream. I thought of the time I reached into the fridge and drank from what I thought was a carton of milk, but turned out to be orange juice. I spat it all over my kitchen, for no other reason than surprise.

Certain sensations always seem to belong to certain landscapes. When they switch themselves around, an experience that is ordinarily pleasant turns alien and maybe even unwelcome. Like when you work so hard on your snow fort that you have to take off your coat because you're overheating inside it. Patches of ice are totally unwelcome when unexpected, as are breezes, sunshine, and animals. They hypnotize us momentarily.

It's human to crave predictability in our surroundings.

where are you from?

I have a friend at home who likes to get a rise out of people. This is a girl who, working her job at the public library, loudly announced to a coworker that she thought Nelson Mandela was overrated and it doesn't take that much effort to sit in jail for 30 years.

One of her favorite tricks is answering "American" to any inquiries of her heritage. Conversations usually go like this:

"Where are you from?"
"I'm American."
"Oh, no. I mean what's your nationality?"
"American."
"Like...your heritage?"
"American."
"Oh. Like Native American?"
"No, just American."
"That's not what I mean! Where is your family from?"
"America."

It's funny to watch people who don't know better try to fight with her, but more intriguing is that people have such an angry reaction to her completely honest answer. What is it about our distant heritage that we Americans, normally so proud of our nationalities, must identify within ourselves?

...if you were wondering, mine is German, Scottish, Norwegian, Swedish, Czech, and Magyar.