Terror and Beauty

The city is terribly beautiful, or beautifully terrible. I can't decide. There is jazz in the summer, lights and colors, snowflakes on my tongue and garlands stretched from pole to pole. I like the business and the bustle. I love looking up at the buildings and feeling the city's pulse--it is bright and beautiful, and I am everything and nothing all at once.

But looking down, there is darkness that I don't know how to judge. Two levels below ground trapping all the dripping smells of congested traffic, sewage and who knows what steaming out of vents in the walls--the sinus of the city. A man lays his head down to sleep behind 2 cardboard curtains. This decent blocks out the bite of the wind, but not the freezing blackness in his eyes. Another man does not speak, but holds up two fingers for two free lunches. The tense gathering of skin around his cheekbones says please. And thank you. Then he returns to his broom and dust pan, sweeping up the place he calls home.

It's a home, isn't it? A small, fragmented society exists quietly below the streets, behind the music and the architecture, and this is where it lives--underneath everything. A home is a perfectly rational place to sweep. But this home is so grossly removed from the homely and the comfortable, the warmth and the family, that his lips make no sound and his eyes, too, are frozen like colored glass, empty of some things but so incredibly full of others.

Everything about this side of the city is so terrible. So terribly unjust, so terribly wrong. Perhaps society is terribly at fault. Yet I can't help but say that this man with the untold story in his eyes is somehow very beautiful.

Books and Movies and Boys, Oh My!

The main villain in No Country For Old Men has to be the creepiest character I have ever seen. Javier Bardem is brilliant, but he is going to haunt me in my dreams until I see him in another movie that doesn't involve him waiting in dark, empty rooms and shooting people without bullets and generally just being the scariest man on film.

More importantly, however, that was an excellent movie. I liked it especially because it was different than what I am used to. The suspense was brilliant. There was no soundtrack, and the dialog was the bare minimum necessary--cowboys don't waste words. I remember senior year English class, Ms. Witham talking about Cormack McCarthy's brilliance. She was right, I need to read more of his work than just half of All the Pretty Horses.

Now that she is retired, I have this romantic image of her on her horse in New Mexico, galloping around looking for cowboys. I just hope she doesn't run into any drug deals gone wrong--and if she does, let's hope she has the sense not to take the money. She seems to be the teacher from High School that I remember the most--granted, I had her for two years, and she was the sponsor for the Literary Magazine, but she was also more than just a teacher somehow. She had her horse and a mysterious past life that she would only talk about in sparse context. Like a cowboy. I barely knew her. Funny where stream of conscious writing gets me.

So add McCarthy to my reading list (I'm told The Road is excellent), after I finish V for Vendetta. I might want to, ya know, do some of my reading for class, too. And I have a list of books recommended to me over the summer that I still haven't read. I don't think there's much hope for my level of cultural literacy, though. It seems like every time someone mentions a book or movie or show or band I have no idea what they're talking about.

So little time, it seems. But I'm so prone to waste it. I've been incredibly lazy this week. I go to a frat to dance and have fun, and I do, and a guy trying to be suave introduces himself: "So my friends and I are playing this pick-up line game." I laugh of course, until he adds, "but I wasn't going to use any lines on you, I was just wondering if you have any suggestions for how I can pick her up?" And I wonder what they heck I'm doing there being tempted to dump my drink on this guy's head. "No... sorry... can't really think of anything..." Bastard.

I've been told I should have kicked him in the balls for hitting on me just to get to a friend, but then, I've also been told that I wasn't even insulted. I think it's both, but for different reasons. Whatever, I have books to read. And I should sleep.

I Don't Hate Life

I haven't been updating very much because I feel like everything I say sounds dumb or pretentious or just plain pointless--when will I outgrow blogging? But I know that people must read this sometimes, because I've had people ask me about things I've written--specifically, my rant over the summer about how UChicago sucks and how I wanted to transfer.

To clarify, that post was meant to say, these crazy ideas have been going around in my head for a while, but spending a day with Salisbury during O-Week reminded me that there are definitely good things about this school. I was frustrated and reluctant to admit that, but it's what I really meant to write.

Now that I am back, I am happy to say that those feelings have solidified, and I'm not going anywhere. People in the house are awesome--really really awesome, like family sometimes. And I'm more involved with some things, and actually busy with schoolwork. I tend to procrastinate as always, but I'm working on that (when I'm not blogging, that is), and trying to plan my life.

I'd like to say I've been happy--for the most part, I really have been. The past couple weeks have been a little rough and overly dramatic and stressful, but such is life when midterms and episodes of freaking out have their way with you. Overall though, it's looking up, it'll work itself out. Like the Explosions in the Sky album, "The Earth Is Not A Cold Dead Place."

That is, not until the Chicago winter sucks the life out of everything.

(Bitterness and negativity are not the same as unhappiness, i.e. I didn't just contradict myself entirely :)