Nervous Energy

Update: Gran is here now, and she's fabulous. I've suddenly remembered how nice it is to converse with an older person who has good hearing and interesting things to say (and moves faster than the speed of the ice age...). Not only am I amazed at her stamina (it's 9:25 now -- nearly three in the morning her time -- and she's just starting to get ready for bed!), I've already been amused by her anecdotes and interested by our discussions of parenting, jewish-ness, and the relative merits of cats versus dogs. If tonight is anything to judge by, I needn't have been nervous at all!

My grandmother from England is coming tomorrow to see me graduate and for the birthday/graduation/wedding party thing my parents are throwing for my brother and me (not that me and my brother are getting married -- it's my birthday and my graduation, and his wedding to Meghan. Just so we're all clear.)

Since Gran is a bit of a scary matriarch who's been falling in and out of sorts with most of her children at various points over the last fifty years, this impending visit has got Mum and Dad in a bit of a nervous tizzy. Plus, hosting a party for 20-plus is a big deal for them, considering they're still finding having four people for dinner to be a out-of-the-ordinary event.

I'm not too worried -- I'm used to cooking for large amounts of people (thank you, QCF retreats!) and Gran and I have been sending very cordial letters back and forth for years -- but the general atmosphere of slightly tense anticipation is getting to me. I find myself restless more often than not, and even when I don't have anything to do I feel like I should. Biku's coming over this weekend, which should help me to ignore things and watch hours of cheesy tv, but I predict I'll still be a bit more on edge than usual.

In other news, I'm a smart cookie. I don't like saying that normally, but since I got the Medal in English from Queen's, it's kind of official now. Woot! I'm posting about it here since I keep forgetting about it, and this way people will know through me, instead of through Mum and Dad (who appear to be telling the entire known world about it. )

Gathering Thoughts On an Evening Walk in Spring

I've always liked dandelions.

Despite their bad reputation as weeds, I liked them because they were the one flower I could consistently identify from a young age, and because of their colour. Yellow. Like little tiny starbursts, a whole field of them was bright and shiny and seemed to beckon me to go running in them, to lie down and watch clouds for the whole afternoon.

And even when they weren't yellow anymore, when they had undergone that mysterious transformation from starbursts to white-haired balls, even then I liked them. They may have lost their joyous colour, but now I could send them off into the wind, blowing my wish away along with a puff of seeds. People used to tell me not to blow dandelions, that that only caused the weed to spread, but I couldn't understand how this was a bad thing.

(Weeds. It's a funny sort of classification, isn't it? As far as I can tell, in the plant world, you get labelled a "weed" if you grow quickly, propogate widely, and can take over the territory of other plants. And yet in the human world, those very same traits are labelled entirely differently: "Colonisation". "Success". "Virility". "Industry".)

As I grew older, I'm sad to say I had less and less time for playing in the dandelion fields. I still admired them as I went walking, but the careful contemplation that can only happen in childhood was gone. It's been ages since I popped the head off of one (I can't even remember the vaguely obscene song that one sang before this cruel beheading), or dusted off the light pollen on my fingers, or squeezed out the delicate milky sap for intense scientific scrutiny.

But today, on a nightly walk after a day of desultory rain, I noticed something new and entirely fascinating about this "weed". Normally delicate cotton balls of fluffy, carefully distinct seeds, the dandelions had been sent into total disarray by the rain. Like a wet cat, the fluffy seeds which normally sailed through the air had all clumped together on the stalk, turning what was usually a Eisteinian afro into a spiny mace-like ball. These seeds, weighed down by water, wouldn't be sailing off to new and fertile ground anytime soon.

At first I thought it was sad -- the whole propogation mechanism of this hardy plant had been ruined by a little rain. But then my metaphorical mind kicked in ( and do excuse me if I get too anthropomorphic or too overt -- I've had an odd sort of day). Faced with adversity, with painful missiles dropping from on high, the tiny seeds literally stick together. They may not look as pretty, but their clumping into tiny bundles saved them from being swept away all together. They managed to hang on by hanging on to each other.

And tomorrow is a new day. If more rain comes, the dandelion can handle it. But if (oh wonder of wonders!) the sun comes out once more, then slowly the seeds will dry out. They'll seperate from one another -- not entirely, but enough to stand proudly on their own again. Soon they'll return to their usual state of fluffy allure, waiting for someone or something to come along and blow them to a new home.

Reading and Writing (but no 'rithmetic)

I've been reading Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird, a book whose cover promises that it is "Some Instructions on Writing and Life". I always feel like a dork for repeating that line of obvious promotional claptrap, but in this case it's actually true. I can't get through any one of the (many, and short) chapters in this book without having a terrible urge to write the next Great Novel.

Every so often I get urges to write. I dabbled in fiction (mostly of the bad Mary Sue variety) when I was a teenager, but for the last four years my writing has been confined to essays and talks for QCF. However, now that I'm staring down the abyss of my life post-undergrad (which, for a geek like me, is a scary prospect) I'm realizing that there was a reason why I liked writing essays so much. I am a writer, for better or for worse, and it seems like I need to produce words every so often for my own health. (For instance, I was feeling inexplicably bad when I started this post, but just typing this is helping me feel -- just as inexplicably --better.)

The question remains which sort of words I should produce. I've been considering for a while now that I should have a seperate Japan blog as a way of letting everyone who wants to read a semi-sanitized travellogue while this blog can remain a dumping ground for personal angst/weird ramblings. More recently it's occured to me that I should perhaps start a religion blog -- somewhere I can feel free to write down notions that occur to me regarding Jesus and his buddies without feeling like I'm inflicting my faith on anyone who doesn't want to read about it.

When I was younger, I tried to keep a journal. Actually, I tried to keep several journals. I still have most of them -- each with one, two, or maybe three entries before I stopped writing. The only journals I kept up on as a kid were brief travellogues which I kept writing mostly because I knew Biku would want to read them. The idea of having different blogs appeals to me, becuase I write much better when a) I'm typing and b) I have a perceived audience who are reading what I write.

Despite Anne Lamott's very excellent encouragement, I don't think I'd be able to write a novel. I mean, I know I haven't tried very hard, but I have trouble imagining characters other than me or a vaguely modified version of me, and I don't think I have the skills of observation necessary in order to see and learn how to describe the world around me. Fiction is, in Alice Munro's phrase, the marvelous clear jelly which takes a lifetime to learn how to make, and I don't think I have either the right ingredients for that recipe.

But I still need to write. It's like some kind of drug which I'm hopelessly addicted to, and suddenly cut off from. I have to find new ways to get my fix, new ways to get the words that parade around inside my head out in ways that will satisfy me and (perhaps) interest others.

Shifting Gears

Less than 72 hours after my last university exam, here I am masquerading as a supply teacher. Not that it's that hard -- this is a private school after all, most of the boys are fairly docile. Grade 8 art class right before lunch was a bit rowdy, but I just threatened to hold them (and their stomachs) hostage if they didn't quiet down, and they cooperated.

In all, it's a bit surreal here. I still feel like I'm just a kid pretending to teach, not an actual teacher. The boys don't question my authority though, and I've been somewhat relieved not to have them question me about my father (although we did have a good discussion about the meaning of 'nepotism' in my first class ;). In any case, it's good money and as long as I don't have to do this full time (some tv-watching and sleeping-in days would be nice) I think I'll quite enjoy it. The rush of dictatorial power alone is quite yummy.