silly

Teddy-Book

Teddy-Book waited until her mistress was gone from the house. It had taken longer than usual this evening, since her mistress seemed ecstatic about something or other. She kept putting on clothes and then taking them off and putting on other ones, while staring at the mirror. She also kept talking at Teddy-Book, who wasn’t really listening to her.

“Does this look good? No, no, of course it doesn’t, it’s black and somber. He’ll think I’m dressing for a funeral or something. Okay, okay, so what about this? Is this better? Yellow is cheerful, flowers are good – but no! It’ll be too cold, what am I thinking? Or maybe that’s good. Then he’ll have to give me his coat. And you know what my friend Gil says, don’t you, Teddy? If a guy doesn’t give you his coat by the fifth date then he’s no gentleman and you’re better off without him.”

Teddy-Book sat on the bed, eyes glazed, limbs immobile, just like she always did. She was very bored with what her mistress that evening, and impatient for her to be gone. After all, Teddy-Book thought to herself glumly, she’s usually much more sensible than this, but if this Peter guy stays in her life, I think she’ll never be sensible again.

Finally, at about ten after eight in the evening, the mistress left. Teddy-Book got up gingerly, stretching her stiff, furry limbs. She climbed awkwardly off the bed, holding onto the blankets hard until she felt her soft feet hit the ground, and only then let go. Padding softly to the mirror, she looked at herself, turning this way and that. The mistress still hadn’t caught on to what Teddy-Book was doing, which was to the good.

When the mistress was little, her parents brought Teddy-Book back from a store one day. The mistress fell in love with her, and for a while, carried her around everywhere. She quickly discovered Teddy-Book’s special feature, the one that made her infinitely different from other teddies. She had a pocket inside her. Her round, furry stomach was velcroed shut, but could easily be opened. Inside, the mistress found a lot of fluffy white cotton, but it could all be pushed rather flat against Teddy-Book’s back, and then there was room inside of her to hide things in. The mistress loved to read when she was little, and she began hiding her books inside Teddy and taking her everywhere, and then taking the hidden books out and reading them. She couldn’t hide the big picture books there, of course, so she started to peruse her parents’ shelves and read things that she didn’t really understand but that were fun nonetheless, because she could hide them in Teddy-Book.

But now, Teddy-Book thought every day with a sigh, she didn’t read so much anymore. She spent her time putting on makeup and taking it off, calling her friends and shrieking, and lately, also going out with stupid boys. So Teddy-Book, who was left alone every evening, had developed a habit of her own. When it was night-time, and the whole family was asleep, she’d creep around the house and pick a book off a shelf. She’d hide it in that worn little empty place inside her belly, and then hop back into bed with mistress. The mistress never noticed Teddy-Book’s extra weight because she hardly ever picked her up anymore. Teddy-Book, standing at the mirror, thought sadly about how even now, with a fat book like David Copperfield inside her belly, her mistress didn’t notice it.

So she took the book out, leaned against the mirror with her tuft of a tail fitting exactly between the mirror and the floor comfortably, and continued reading where she’d left off last time. She hoped that one day she wouldn’t have to amuse herself every night like this. As she turned the pages, reading with some surprise David mention a daughter – but who’s daughter? Dora’s or Agnes’s? – she wondered of mistress would one day have a daughter. Maybe then Teddy-Book could be hugged again by arms not much larger than her own and carried about everywhere again.

Good

What does it mean to be good? Does it mean being kind? If so, is the kindness restricted to actions, or must it extend to your thoughts as well?

What does it mean to be good? Is it something inbred, a trait that you’re born with? Is it something you learn? Is it something that seeps into you from your environment? Is it something that you can seek out and acquire?

What does it mean to be good? Does it mean being what others expect goodness to be, or striving for your own sense of it? Is it being good for goodness’ sake, or being good for a cause?

What does it mean to be good? Do some of us just have it while others lack it completely? Are there degrees to it? Can someone be a little bit good or almost no good at all or full of goodness that shines out of them like a beacon?

What does it mean to be good?

Maybe, more importantly, are the reasons for being good. The reasons for wanting to be good. As to those, I guess they’re just as individual as goodness itself is.

Face Down, In A Drawer

You may not comprehend my emotions. I admit it, I tend to be overly dramatic at times. That trait of mine is part of my charm, however. Or so it used to be. Now, it seems I’ve become so over-the-top that I just don’t fit anymore. For someone like me, there’s nothing worse.

I started out fine. Well, that’s not strictly true. I started out gleaming, perfect, utterly spotless. I was completely black-and-white then, no doubt whatsoever between the two. Then the change began. I was worn ragged, day after day. I saw the uglier side of the world, was trodden down upon, completely used up. But see, that’s what made me cool. That’s what made me fit in to the scene I’d always wanted to be part of. I was tattooed, grungy, dirty and scruffy. But I looked good. No one could dismiss the fact that I looked damn good.

Until the day it got to be too much. Until I started not being able to function properly. I’d been so worn down, that I wasn’t a comfort anymore. I started being ignored. Week by week, I was left alone more often than not, until one day I was simply finished. Capute. Finito. Face-down in a drawer in the closet, and a new clone occupying my place.

It’s a hard life, I tell ya, being a Converse high-top.

Yearning

Sometimes I feel a yearning for something, but I don’t know what. I can’t recognize what it is that I’m looking for, what it is that I’m craving.
It’s an odd feeling, wanting something, needing something so badly but not being able to reach what it is. There’s a nostalgic element to it, as well
as a melancholy one. It’s as if, all at once, I’m waiting for something that is to be while mourning it’s eventual loss as well and missing what
once was. How do you reconcile such confusing emotions?
There isn’t a real reason for my writing about this tonight. I simply feel, once in a while, that I need to write what I’m thinking and feeling.
Sometimes it even helps, makes the next day or the nest few hours a little easier, just a little freer from worries and strange emotions.
Tonight as I write, the weather has finally turned cold and outside lightning flashes and thunder rumbles occasionally. I’m not scared of the lights and
noises anymore, not like when I was young, but I still feel an uneasiness climbing into bed with a storm raging outside. The mere fact that the sky
can release such vast quantities of water upon us seems to make all my worried insignificant and petty. Perhaps they are – probably so, in fact.
Nevertheless, there’s something comforting about looking at them on the screen, written out and confessed. There’s a release to it.

Heat-Wave

Melting.

It’s February. It’s supposed to be winter. Maybe not a very cold winter, but winter nonetheless. I can accept it being nice and springy, warm in the sun and cool in the shade. I can accept it being sunny and bright most days, with a lovely breeze making the branches rustle.

But it seems the weather has gone as mad as a hatter, because it’s HOT, HUMID, and MUGGY. In February.

Seriously, people. Melting here.

Block

It shouldn’t be called “writer’s block.” The word “block” gives the image of a beginning, of something being built, one piece at a time until it’s complete. But writer’s block merely means a lack of building blocks. But perhaps not? Maybe writer’s block is an overabundance of images and ideas that refuse to be put into any form or shape that seems coherent. Or maybe writer’s block is when all the visions that fill the imagination fuse together into a big shape from which nothing can be isolated and looked at on its own.

Lewis Carrol’s Birthday

According to a writing prompt I found online, today is Mr. Carrol’s birthday. The writing prompt suggested that I write about my favorite character in Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland. I thought that this was a marvelous idea, especially because during my semester at school, I had to read it for a project which I won’t, alas, be doing.

I bought myself a beautiful copy of both Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. It has all the original illustrations in it, as well as a beautiful, colorful cover. I felt immense joy at carrying the book around and just thumbing through its pages. A book’s physical presence can be so helpful to the experience of reading it. This is why I don’t want a Kindle or a Nook or any of the other electronic readers. I’m straying off topic, so let’s get back to little Alice.

I think my favorite character in Adventures, apart from Alice herself, is little Bill, the lizard. Poor old Bill is always the one who gets picked on throughout the book – first he’s forced to approach Alice in her gigantic form and receives a kick for his troubles; next, mischievous Alice steals his pencil and he keeps writing with his fingers without making any marks on the page, to his great perplexity.

In Through the Looking Glass, I’d like to say that my favorite characters are the kittens – but that’s just because I cannot for the life of me resist kittens. In truth, though, I suppose my favorite character is that of the clumsy knight. The knight is said to be Lewis Carrol himself, in all his chivalrous silliness, and the way he’s described is so very touching. It’s as if Lewis Carrol wants so badly to be a white knight for little Alice, but knows that he is much too bumbling and awkward to be of any help.

[Note: I know there’s lots of controversy about Lewis Carrol and Alice, but as far as this post is concerned, I’m treating it as the innocence it’s portrayed to be by Lewis Carrol himself.]

Reading List

McKenzie inspired me to do this, as well as a friend I spend time with this week. I’ve always been a big reader, but I’ve never kept track of the books I’ve read. I simply look on my shelves, and I know which books I’ve read and which I haven’t. I’ve never, so far, had a doubt as to whether or not I’ve read a certain book, so I’ve never had a problem of deciding which books I should buy when I go to a bookstore. But I thought that this year, for fun more than anything, I’ll keep track.

Behold, the list of books I’ve read so far in 2010:

  1. Wuthering Heights by Emily Bronte
  2. Death in Holy Orders by P. D. James
  3. Gone by Jonathan Kellerman
  4. Obsession by Jonathan Kellerman
  5. Death of An Expert Witness by P. D. James
  6. The Mozart Season by Virginia Euwer Wolff [reread]
  7. The Secret Life of Amanda K. Woods by Ann Cameron [reread]
  8. Three Junes by Julia Glass
  9. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
  10. Dupont Circle by Paul Kafka-Gibbons
  11. Dreams Underfoot by Charles de Lint
  12. The Book Thief by Markus Zusak

A Painful Confession

Well, the time has come to write this post. I’ve put it off for a few days, but I’d better not put it off anymore. Here goes.

As some of you know, I’m nineteen years old and I started Sarah Lawrence College in August, 2009. I just came back a couple weeks from my first semester there. I was supposed to have flown back to New York to begin my next semester at the end of January. BUT, and this is where the confession comes in… I’m not. I’m taking a medical leave of absence during the spring semester.

The reason is that I’ve been struggling with an eating disorder for a year and a half now. I began to diet and exercise in the summer of 2008, and became obsessed and consumed by the process of restricting meals, exercising and losing weight. I knew what I was doing, but I didn’t think I could legitimately say that I had any sort of eating disorder, and I still always felt that I looked bad. My boyfriend of two and a half years now urged me to begin therapy, and so I confided in my mother and began seeing a psychologist. Next, I began to see a dietitian. All this was happening while I was in the process of applying to colleges, getting in, flying out to see them and making my choice of where to attend. By August of 2009, I’d gained enough perspective and weight so that my therapist and my mother both felt secure enough to send me to college.

Even though I set up a similar support network in the USA, I still relapsed badly and lost a lot of weight, reaching the lowest weight I’d ever gotten to and endangering my health. Because of this, I’ve been strongly advised to take a leave of absence and focus on getting better, physically, as well as emotionally.

People have very fixed and prejudiced views about young women who have eating disorders – we’re all privileged and bored, shallow and reaching for fashion. This is really not what it’s about. Sure, yes, it starts from the superficial goal of losing a few pounds, but it goes to somewhere completely different emotionally, until there’s an irrational monster in our minds telling us that we must lose weight, while our logic and intellect tell us that this is wrong. Thus, an endless and extremely painful battle of wills seems to dominate our minds at all times.

Believe me, I know that looks aren’t everything in life. In fact, I look at other women around me and I see the beauty in them no matter what their size and shape. I truly don’t look at weight and judge people by it – but I judge myself by it, even though I know I shouldn’t. I know that I’m too thin. I know that I’m in danger. But still the voice in my head criticizes every mouthful of food I consume.

To sum up, what this means is that I’ll be flying New York next week on Monday to move my things out of my dorm room and put them in storage. I’ll be coming back the Saturday of that week, and then will be living in Israel with my mom for the next eight months. The goal, of course, is to return to Sarah Lawrence come August, 2010. My hope is that I’ll manage to achieve this. Meanwhile, I’ll keep writing, I’ll keep posting, and hopefully I’ll be able to use these months for something worthwhile, like maybe actually finishing one of my writing-projects.

New Year

New Year’s Eve. All around the world, there will be people counting down to their own time zone’s midnight, raising glasses of champagne to their lips and toasting each other and the entrance of the new year. People will kiss, dance, rejoice in something that feels monumental to them. Some will be saddened, feeling the holiday season’s last gasp come to a close and thinking bleakly about the coming week which will be completely back to normal.

New Year’s Eve. A holiday of sorts that should mean something – the beginning of something new and the farewell to something old. It should be a time for resolutions and dreams, hopes and ambitions, fears overcome and disappointments shrugged off.

New Year’s Eve. It’s never meant much to me, honestly. It should mean a lot of things, but it never seems to live up to what I would expect it to be. It’s just a night like any other night, to me. I feel like we should always be ushering in the new and making resolutions and hoping for the future – not just one evening a year.