Occult Week

My posts from today are a rather eclectic collection of things I've been doing for the last two weeks.

-watched Hellsing, the anime. I had been misled into thinking it was a phenomenal anime because of Kay's fantastic AMV, but I ended up not liking it too much. I liked the way they treated Victoria's angst with becoming a vampire (not an original subject in modern vampire lore, but still well done), the infighting among different vampire hunting organizations (mainly the Catholic and Protestant branches) and the thorough knowledge of British military structure. Still, I wouldn't say it was great because it taxed my suspension of disbelief just a wee bit much. Honestly, any fantasy character (and by my definition, horror still counts as a part of the fantasy genre by dint of being "fantastic") with powers must have rules regarding them somehow, in order to be believable. If in this universe vampires are killed by blessed silver, then it shouldn't be too much to ask that a vampire who is stabbed/shot greviously with blessed silver be killed consistently. Anyone with godlike powers ought to have a set limit to their godlike powers, or else a story degenerates from being a story, and turns into a special effects extravaganza (*cough* Matrix 3... *cough*). Besides, too many questions were unanswered for there to be much semblance of a plot. I should also note that there's an absurdly high mortality rate for... well, all the characters.

Also, though Jeremy prefers watching anime with subtitles, Helsing, which takes place in London, really should be watched dubbed. It takes place in London, therefore you ought to watch it in English. This is a no-brainer. Most of the voices are pretty good. Integra's voice actress is right on the mark, as is Ferguson's, though he's only a minor character. Alucard's voice actor has a nice voice, but can't act for shit. Walter sounds like a nondescript English butler but isn't bad. Victoria's voice is annoying because it's too "snobby British" for a cop. Priest Anderson, they gave an over the top Irish accent, which makes sense because he's Catholic, but I just never imagined him that way. It's like making Wolfwood Irish.. it's not something you'd do. But I prefer the dub just because the translation flows better in English than the translation for the sub, which is rather bad. There are just little things you wouldn't do in English that are annoying in the sub. For example, the translation of names. Alucard is translated as "Arucard," Ferguson as "Fargason," Integra (a girl's name) as "Integral," Anderson as "Andersong"... It's silly. Random epithets are clunky. Who gets called "Little Kitten" as a nickname? This is "Baka-chan" in Japanese so it makes sense there, but in English, a kitten, by definition, is little. And no one, as far as I've experienced, has ever been called a "sow" or a "whore-bitch."

-Van Helsing, the movie. It was fun. I liked it. It had many scenes that made me jump (but then again I shriek when Niall jumps out at me from around a corner), non-stop action, cool Gothic scenery, asskicking weapons (repeat-fire crossbow, anyone?) and trite comedy which I found funny anyway (I never claimed to have refined tastes). Downside- many scenes with lots of goop, and Kate Beckinsale in slutty make up. Their Dracula wasn't that great... fairly cookie cutter. It's not, you know.. high drama, but it is a fun movie.

-Hellboy. It's good. It has likeable, quirky characters with defined personalities that you can relate to emotionally and deadpan humor in the strangest places. Plus, some of the concepts are pretty original (a clockwork villain??). Not as fast-paced as Van Helsing, but of course it makes up for this with having better, you know, story and acting. Gee.

Wish they wouldn't do that, "Oh my god, somebody save my kittens!" cliche they do in every movie when some natural disaster or monster is killing people in the city left and right, and some moronic woman wants the hero to save her cat, but at least it's in character. Hellboy likes kittens. And chili. And pancakes. That's what I love about him; you can't be hatin' on a superhero who likes pancakes. And plus, the first ever human/demon romance story arc I've ever seen.

-Jeremy's favorite anime, Vampire Princess Miyu. She's a vampire. She's a princess. But don't be fooled, both of these aspects are completely irrelevant to the actual plot. Anyway, it's about this vampire schoolgirl (!!!) who acts as an immortal guardian to mankind, slaying demons who prey on human emotions. Despite sounding corny, it's rather well done, a bit depressing even, as it is essentially an ironic commentary on human nature. Each episode has a demon that preys on some human's flaw or dream, and the demon's appearance and manner of feeding somehow relates to said human weakeness. This format allows it to go on a truckload of philosophical tangents. It's a bit hard to understand since (according to Jeremy) it takes many concepts from Shinto and uses theatrical devices from kabuki, but the incoherence is the result of an alien culture, not because its creators were incompetent with storytelling. Oh, and the last episode made me cry for like ten minutes nonstop. Not really an uplifting anime, but it's damn good.

Museum Weekend, Part 2

After lunch, went to the Dime Museum in Baltimore. As we went in, the director explained to us that it was an authentic recreation of traveling sideshows from the 19th century, which is basically a disclaimer that anything we see that's offensive is "history," not sensationalism. Therefore he covers his ass and we can't sue him.

Though it's intended as history, it's not that edifying. The main draw of the museum is what drew our ancestors (okay, your white ancestors) to freak shows a hundred years ago... weird ass shit.

It's got the world's largest bat, which weighs 600 ponds and "can kill a horse." It's a baseball bat. Har har har.

It's also got an "authentic" fossilized fairy and the world's biggest wall of ties. It has Victorian samplers, which would be exquisitely lovely except that they're embroidered completely in human hair. God, Victorians! I think their imperialist tendencies must've been compensatory for something. There was a good deal of relics from the Victorian era, like jewelry made tiger claws, or more eerily, people's baby teeth, and a landscape picture supposedly made of multicolored butterfly wings glued onto a backing (it looked very cool, but could've been done with tissue paper as well). Naturally, there were also some mummies, one of an "Amazon," and one of some pharoah, which I would be disinclined to accept as authentic if it weren't for the fact that the mummy of Ramses the first was actually found in a dime museum by Niagara Falls. (True!)

Museum Weekend, Part 1

My dorm sponsored a trip to see some museums in Fell's Point on the first of May, so I went, with Jeremy. Went to the Great Blacks in Wax Museum, a rather cheesy place in Baltimore, but sadly the most visited museum there. Baltimore is not that great a place. Did learn a few things though.

-Did you know that Pushkin was black? <--- (I purposefully do not capitalize this, unlike my socialistic sociology book. IMHO, there are no such thing as races, only ethnicities. Therefore black is an adjective, not a proper noun). I find this tidbit of knowledge to be pretty cool. I knew he was a great Russian writer, but didn't know he was black. I'm glad he was taught to us in school as "a great Russian writer" rather than a "great black writer," because the latter would imply that he's only worth studying because he's black and therefore satisfying some "cultural diversity" quota in the school curriculum.

-Did you know that Rastafarianism is actually a religion combining mysticism and Judeo-Christian beliefs? And all this time I just thought it was a dress style.

-Sheba was a great civilization that was a precursor to Ethiopia. All my friends at UMBC are science majors of some sort and so they don't understand what motivates me to read up on these things on my own. They are my friends in terms of social activities and entertainment, but it gets a bit lonely sometimes in the academic sector. I wish I knew more about the ancient world. It's rather remarkable how many great civilizations we've forgotten. 500 years of influence and centuries later, it's as if you never were. Ashes to ashes, I suppose. Persia, Kush, Canaan, Syria, Phoenicia, Anatolia, Abbyssinia, Aramaia are all names to me, and yet what places they must have been.

Did you know that Kay is a fratboy? I mean, in hindsight it seems rather obvious. You look at at our roleplaying group and you go, "GEE, I wonder who's the fratboy??" It's amazing how he can be simultaneously cooler than us yet nerdier than us at the same time.

I learned how to crochet. When people ask me what I'm making I say, "A tangled knot of yarn." I really don't know what this is. It's too small to be anything. Maybe a penis warmer I guess.

Check out my econ project webpage, yo.

No, I didn't do the html. I wish.

Gay or Asian?

See, it's not that I think that being called gay is an insult, or that I object to good-natured humor regarding the androgynous dress style of many Asian men, it's just that the kung-fu/samurai/Chinese food delivery stereotypes are some of the most annoying and grating pieces of shit I've ever seen. Oh yeah, and I so want to be "a crazy cool Americaaaaannn!" because clearly, all true Americans are white.

-_-

Morons.

In This Day and Age College Kids Who Drink are Outlaws While, Say, People Who Get Rehab Against Heroin Addiction Are "Victims" or Have an "Illness."

On Sunday night, Jeremy walked me back to my room, kissed me goodnight, and left. He turned the lights off as he closed the door behind him, I locked it, and went to bed.

About five minutes later, a shaft of light fell over my face as the door opened, and in came two guys, hoisting my roomate between them. They flopped her down onto the bed. A small crowd was gathering in the hallway. Two people were the RAs from the front desk (who check IDs), and one (a Sarah, I think) came in and sat on the bed and called my roommate's name but she wouldn't respond. There was a quiet argument about whether to call an ambulance; the terrors of being treated like a criminal weighed against the necessity of getting medical help. Sarah went to call the EMTs. John, one of the guys who'd brought Mai in, talked to her in a firm and gentle voice, asking how much she'd had (a Long Island iced tea and two marguiritas), a soothing sound in the dark interspersed throughout the room by sporadic bursts of speech over cell phones to worried friends across the state. Mai insisted in a slurred murmur, as her eyes focused and unfocused, that she was fine and wanted to sleep, and John insisted over and over again like a lullaby to a child that they were just making sure she was okay, in a rise and fall of voices by the bed.

A very cop-like cop came in and asked where the sick person was, and asked John questions (WHERE WERE YOU. at a club in virgina. HOW MUCH DID SHE HAVE. three i think a long island iced tea and two marguiritas. ARE YOU OF AGE. we are but she isn't. HOW OLD IS SHE. twenty i think but i'm not sure you can check her id. IS THIS HER FIRST TIME DRINKING.) "no," I said and they asked who I was and I said I was the roommate and I showed him the empty vodka bottles between the wardrobes and he asked how old I was and I said eighteen and he asked if there were any full bottles in the fridge and I said no and that I'd not actually seen her drink and didn't know who the empty bottles belonged to since she often has guests over. Then he asked her if she'd been drinking and she said: i never drink in here i just keep the bottles here: and he said, that's not what i asked i asked if you ever drink and then he asked me if she'd been drinking over the weekend but I was home over the weekend and didn't know and the cop held her wrist to take her pulse and she said: whaaat are you doooin???? and he said: taking your pulse, and she tried to bat his hand away but failed. Then the paramedics came in and the cop told them the same story (though I don't think he believed the part where I said the bottles weren't mine even though it's true because he's probably too used to people lying about that kind of thing so even when it's true it sounds like a lie). Then I went downstairs to check in a friend of hers who the desk staff wouldn't let in because she didn't have proper ID and when I came back up to my room the paramedics were taking her blood pressure and then they were trying to convince her to go to the hospital (because she didn't even know her own name or how old she is; she's 19 not 20) but she didn't wannnnaaa but they decided she was under 21 and drunk so she couldn't sign a release form anyway so they took her anyway and they put her in a stretcher and she said why are you strapping me in? but it didn't matter because she couldn't sign a release form, and they took her in the ambulance and left with her friends following her. So I went over to Jeremy's to stay the night.

On Friday night at dinner, I had said, "Mai, I don't care if you drink in your free time because it's your business, but could you at least hide the bottles?"

Sunday, went with Jeremy to Rock Creek park and walked the three mile trail from the entrance at Russet road to Lake Frank and Lake Needwood, which Jeremy calls "Lake Needlewood," which we both agree is a better name. The sky, in degrees of grey and white, hid the sun from the woods and grass in shades of damp green. I showed Jeremy the rocks I had gotten stuck climbing, but we conquered them this time by walking up tree trunks fallen aslant along the slope, weaving through a horizontal jungle gym of fallen foliage a few feet above the ground. We found deer by the flicking of their white tails, the rest of their bodies thickly furred in a sheen of grey. By some small falls, a heron with outstretched wings stroked the air, strutted upon a pair of stilt-legs and speared its beak into the water, emerging with a wiggle disappearing down its throat.

BTW, Lake Needwood has a wooded island.

On Saturday, went to the National Mall with Jeremy, when the sun was bright and the air clear from a week of rain and thunderstorms. Went to the National Aquarium, a dowdy, civic-looking building in which you descend a claustrophobic staircase, the walls badly painted with murals of aquatic life, into a basement resembling a modest fish shop. Saw some puffer fish unpuffed, a long murray eel milky-eyed and sinister, horseshoe crabs (which I got to pet), small alligators, pirahnas, a giant mollusk the size of a small watermelon, hermit crabs caught exposed outside their shells, fiddler crabs with their one giant claw and a tiny one, flounder almost indistinguishable from rocks, an ornery snapping turtle, lobsters the size of your cat, and gar, weird fish with long noses. There went my three dollars and fifty.

Also went to the National Gallery of Art to look at Italian Renaissance paintings, glowing in oils or softer egg tempera, the transcendant Raphaels and the portrait of Ginevra de Benci, the sole Leonardo da Vinci in the Western hemisphere, and, I'm sure, other Ninja Turtles. Also, Botticelli and Titian and Giorgione and other people from history class, who are, inexplicably, not amphibians of any sort. We sat in the National Gallery sculpture garden for a bit, beside the smooth, granite-ringed fountain in which you can dip your feet, and looked at the sculpture resembling a stack of chairs melded together, and the optical illusion sculpture resembling a pile of cubes (Jeremy calls it the Q-bert box), which are actually rectangular. After the museum closed, we strolled through the maze-like pathways of the Hirschorn sculpture garden, with strange objects in bronze, few of them coherent but most of them at least pleasing to the eye in an unexplicable way. Here, a giant bronze ball with etchings, somehow resembling a bombed out city, and from a distance, the etchings looking like reflections in the globe, there, the primordial round shapes of a monolithic woman, there, a nude composed completely of metal cylinders, there, a bird made of rounded crescents... so forth. Oh yes, and there, a statue of a woman that looks completely normal.

After we left Washington, we tried to go to a pizzeria in Dupont Circle for dinner at Kay's suggestion via cell phone, but the circle by the fountain was flooded with pro-choice ralliers pysching up for the big women's rights march on Sunday. Jeremy was getting that tight, clenched muscle look around his jaw, so we left. He did like the ginormous subterranean escalator from the Metro station to the surface, that eerily lit, monumental ode to Death Star (One and Two) ventilation shafts, even if the Metro system was crammed with protestors of all sorts, from the NOW ones to the pro-choice ones to the anti-IMF ones (from a totally different protest down 19th Street). Like cicadas, it's just that type of season. We ended up going to the Barnes and Noble in Bethesda, around sunset, in that small plaza with a brick-lined road and flower pots and outdoor cafes, and from there went to Raku, the Japanese restaurant next to Deli Dhaba. It's a small and cozy place with outdoor seating, and on the inside, colorful paper umbrellas suspended from the ceiling and oblong lamps emitting a buttery glow, and all the smells mingled together which are almost as essential a part of the decor. Service wasn't great; they gave us our food but it was so crowded they didn't have much time for anything else, and the food was an hour in coming and they took twenty minutes to give us our check. But the food was good; I had a bento box (I didn't eat the actual box) and Jeremy had teriyaki salmon.

Now I make you hungry.

Addendum

I don't mind coming in on my roommate having sex so much as the fact that it's never with the same person.

On Friday, went to Bal'more with Jeremy. I thought he was going to take me out to cheer me up from the random depression I'd been in for the last week. But no, he apparently had needed to go fetch the Exalted Players Guide from the Inner Harbor Barnes and Noble. Silly pie. He should learn how to BS.

The sun had come out after basically two weeks of unremitting rain, and made things shiny again. (Malex, I hate you for being in Southern California and not dealing with East Coast weather. :P) We went to Fort McHenry, which we found out later was called Federal Hill, very steep and imposing from up close, with grassy slopes that rise steeper than 30 degress. The top of the hill, with the oversized Star Spangled Banner drooping in windlessness like a disappointed bird, is flat and surmounted by a toothy ring of cannons. It's very freaky, especially to someone like Jeremy with no depth perception, because the slope of the hill disappears behind the ridge formed where the flat and the incline meet, so it looks as if past a certain point the ground just gives way to thin air. But from the top you can see everything, downtown across the harbor with sailboats like little triangular paper cutouts, those crew teams in their slim maritime needles slipping through the blue, and fireboats uncharacteristically jaunty in red and white and thick smoke mushrooming charmingly from the pier. The skyline casts a clean silhouette of sunlight on metal and sky mirrored in glass, and in other directions away from the city, so far in the distance as to be painted against the horizon, roll the hazy blues of hilly piedmont.

For a while you might even say that the city is fair, until you are, in the course of a day, begged at for money by ten (we kept count) people. One man asked us for money for coffee... across the street from a tavern. God, I don't know why I make eye contact with anyone anymore, because as soon as you take your eyes off the sidewalk and look someone in the eye they ask you for spare change. Jeremy told me he does make eye contact, but has mastered a look of such contempt and vitriol that most people just find it better not to approach him for anything. Only one person was with an organized charity. I suppose you could count eleven people total if you count the little girl who tried to sell us chocolates, and twelve if you count the drunk who yelled at Jeremy belligerently and incoherently, but didn't ask for money. The drunk was bellowing "Lifeguard!" at Jeremy (who was wearing his lifeguard t-shirt) and I thought he maybe needed medical attention, but he kind of fell back once Jeremy marched me past, towed very firmly by the arm. He probably was just drunk and didn't need a lifeguard at all (we saw him again on the way back). After all, if I really had some sort of emergency and honest intentions, I wouldn't have been cowed by having someone glare at me. But I also wonder, if I were homeless and had a medical emergency, if I would have any kind of conviction regarding my right to be helped. Most of us would consider a medical emergency a life or death situation, but I think homeless people are so used to being in life or death situations and being ignored (not having money for food every day is a continuous life or death situation in its own way) that maybe they've stopped expecting passerbys to even care about the most terrible of tragedies.

In any case, we didn't give them money.

We walked to historic Fells Point, with brick streets and small shops that sold genuinely interesting gifts items. We had tea at a small, if expensive, Egyptian cafe called The Nile, with frescoes from the Book of the Dead (said Jeremy) where Anubis weighs the souls of the dead, and hieroglyphs painted along the walls. On the other wall was an Egyptian hunting scene with archers and trappers and a woman on a papyrus boat amongst the cool reeds of the Nile, inhabited by comical fish and a graceful flock of herons in flight. This segued, next to stairs to the upper (private) floor, into a mural of veiled women and men in headdress captioned in Arabic. I thought they got their genres mixed. In any case, there is nothing quite like the texture of late afternoon sunlight on a hardwood floor, so the atmosphere was fine by me, and it was a rather relaxed affair revolving around mint tea, jallab (date juice with the subtle hint of rosewater as an aftertaste), a bizarre, honey-coated dessert that looked like a giant wheaties (kunafa), and a cinnamon buttered, almond cake with oranges (basbousa). Later, we went back to B&N, and wandered around because I swore I'd seen a theater around there somewhere, except I must not've (there's a theater along North Charles Street but none downtown). In the coming of the evening, we found a cozy, winding walkway through a series of waterfall-fountains, where the niche behind a curtain of water provided a little bit of privacy.

Revenge of the Asian Tattooist

Martial Artist Kills Burglars

Hee hee! You get 'em!

Went to a formal, multi-course dinner at the Skylight Lounge and learned which forks to use for what food.

"How long will it take you to get ready?" Jeremy asked me.

I said, "Not too long, I just need to change."

Fifteen minutes later, I had shaved my legs, changed, put on my shoes and pantyhose (via a very inefficient process of pulling it while jumping up and down) and was watching Jeremy strive in mortal combat with a necktie ("Argh, it's ALIVE!!! Og kill!!!!") while turning a very elemental shade of red. And he was asking me how long I'd take?

But he looks very cute and squared away while he's playing Mormon.

We were late, but that turned out to be fortuitous because we missed that first half hour of the dinner where people are suppose to "mingle," and we all hate mingling.

Note: Silly white people! You invented gunpowder as a weapon of war, you are (outside of Japan) the richest people in the world with the best health care systems, you have industrial development that's the envy of all countries.... but you still eat rice with forks! What the hell is that? Did someone wake up one day and say, "Gee, look at this eating utensil that is comprised of a series of a parallel tines. Let's eat miniscule, granular objects with it." Morons. Rice is for spoons.

See... when you're too busy conquering people, all the blood in your brain flows to your weapon hand.

How to Collect Semen From A Rhino

Hey, it's Libertarian, er.. "Liberty" Week at UMBC, where we have an orgy of fun-filled Libertarian activities.

Tonight we had political satirist Bob Somerby, and an audience of all of fifteen people.

And next Sunday is the trip to the shooting range!

Oh, Poop.

I've been sick since Friday morning.

I have a fever, upset stomach and diarrhea, which are okay by themselves except that they all ganged up together and formed themselves a roleplaying party. ("I'm the mage!")

Being typically incompetent, UMBC's health services aren't open on weekends. You'd think that if they had to be cheap they could at least staff the health services with pre-med students desperate for money and experience. (Kay, who is a pre-med, "prescribed" me some of his leftover medicine for nausea. I know this is illegal. I don't care.) You might say, "Oh, it's Easter," but Jesus, Health Services is never open on any weekend. They're open from 8am-5pm on Monday through Thursdays, and they close early on Fridays.

But if you want to think about this philosophically, last Easter over high school spring break, I had a high fever and a cough caused by respiratory allergies for three days (strangely enough, after a college visit to UMBC). When I got up from puttering around in bed swathed in blankets drinking lots of water I noticed that the magnolia tree right by my front porch was in blossom and some of the petals were falling down, and I started crying. Well, being sick was basically my spring break but when I got back to school it seemed like everything was different somehow, like it was clean and made new, as if you could feel the place and times changing around you. (This could also be a result of the real academic year drawing to a close as we got into AP and IB Testing Season, and everyone getting their college acceptance notes, and beginning to disappear into the ether of a Real Life, and the days getting longer, and the snow finally going home.) My blog entries from last year around that time don't quite capture what I felt (and neither does this one), if simply because I am not good enough with words. I used to spend hours outside listening to the silence alternating with the wind in the trees, and watch how each blade of grass turned a translucent green-gold in the reborn sun, and hiking on top of hills so that I could see the straight trunks and the newly lush leaves of the trees under and around me.

----

Sunday, April 20, 2003

I am painfully happy for the beauty of the world. I think heaven must be a sunny walk. Why does the world have to change? I must go on living (school, job, marriage, kids) to be happy, but I'm happy already, so why won't the world stay as it is, with the wind and shadows in the grass? It feels like the end of everything, though I know there are no beginnings and no ends, simply living on as one lived before, and the world continues as before.

Anyone can have ambitions, but being content is God's gift. Let me be content then, at least for a while.

Monday, April 21, 2003

"So coming back from a journey, or after an illness, before habits had spun themselves across the surface, one felt that same unreality, which was so startling; felt something emerge. Life was most vivid then." -To the Lighthouse

I am happy now because there's not anywhere else in the world I'd rather be or anything else in the world I'd rather be doing. I spend most of my life either looking forward or backwards, but I've spent today all mellow and at peace waiting for something to happen.

Tuesday, April 22, 2003

There's no greater joy in the world than a good, long, two-hour walk with birdsong and tall trees. It was very strange.. I felt like I'd turn a corner and see something.. I don't know what, like some lost world I once belonged to, a place where I should be and half remembered.

Thursday, April 24, 2003

I have re-discovered a passion for walking, which I suppose is much healthier than my winter passion for S&M and German men.

Walking makes me really really happy. It's so peaceful every day, I don't give a damn about anything, and for that hour and a half, I have everything in life I wish to have. Today, a boy on a bike, maybe around twelve years old, smiled so warmly at me as he went by that it was like the sun came out (I mean, the sun was already out but it was like a second sun came out), and later on, he was with a bunch of friends in the street laughing as they raced each other on bikes and scooters and on foot. And how can such exuberance help but be contagious? And the Good Humor truck came out, the epitome of childhood happiness, and the boy's friend on the bike rode after it, and life was good.


----

Maybe it'll be something of the same this year. Here's hoping.

So happy Easter, y'all.

And I knocked this time!

I really wish I could stop walking in on my roommate having sex.

Speculations Upon the Nature of Eden: a Movement in Three Parts

The Walters Art Gallery in Baltimore has the Della Robbia sculpture from Renaissance Florence featured quite prominently as a dramatic device in "The Birth of Venus" (the recently published novel, not the Botticelli painting), the one where the snake that tempts Adam has a woman's head. I went to see it last Thursday, with Jeremy, but it was something of a disappointment.
---

On Saturday, I went to New York City for a wedding in a ratty, Azn part of Flushing. I personally didn't find it to be that great a wedding; why anyone would have a combination traditional Chinese/nightclub themed wedding afterparty I don't understand. (Presumably the actual ceremony had more decorum; I wasn't there.) You can go to a nightclub for $5 any time you want, but you only get married (hopefully) once in your life. If you ask me, in my fluffy pink thought bubbles where logic and laws of physics do not apply, I'd get married with ribbons woven through my hair, on a wooded island in a glassy lake accessible only by swan-shaped boats and fairy dust, and because my husband will be handsome, rich, intelligent, kind, and perfect in all ways, his smile would bring out the sun itself, so it'd never rain, (it may mist at worst, but that's atmospheric). Or, I'd get married in an Italian villa and ride away in a horse-drawn carriage festooned in garlands. At some point there will be soap bubbles, and ballroom dancing of the kind in which your satin dress rustles across the floor (and it doesn't matter that I can't dance, I'd take lessons six months before, with my husband, who, because he is perfect, is already an amazingly talented, yet infinitely patient, lord of the dance). And then I'd be in a loving relationship, become independently wealthy, well-rounded, good-natured, travel the world beloved by all for my meritorious contributions to society, and live a life of effortless luxury. And then after I die people will look at my gravestone and think, "Damn, she was cool."

Or something like that.

In the event that the above, by some horrendous tragedy, shall not come to pass, I should at least like to declare an edict that there will be no moronic fratboy-esque games at my wedding after-party, with flashing lights and a DJ yelling things in one of those car advertisement voices: "Now everyone on the left side cheer! What's that??? Louder! I can't hear you!!!"

There will be no Eminem or Ludacris at my wedding.
---

If I ever think about getting married, or raising children, or living somewhere or going places in my hazy pastel daydreams of the future, I inevitably find myself inserting Jeremy into the place of what previously was just some nebulous, idealized male figure. That doesn't mean though that I have anything planned, or even marginally intended. I think Jeremy finds it a bit hurtful that I make no long-term statements. It's not that I can't see myself with him in five years or so, it's just that I refuse to say anything, almost like avoiding a jinx. The thought of committment doesn't, say, make me recoil with a jolt of horror, it's simply that I fear to trust to hope as the armor against heartbreak.