Trek on Home

Getting the Star Trek movie on disc was the swiftest over-ten-dollar purchase I've made. I just passed by and knocked it into my basket.

Of course, once Jeff and I got home, we popped it in the player and watched it ravenously while we had our dinner. I was jazzed to see that the movie is well-orchestrated enough that it loses none of its impact on the small screen; my eyes got misty in the same places, none of the close-up intamacies are lost, and the music score ties it all together.

Also of course, being the über geek that I am, getting Trek home also means that I get to nitpick. I don't nitpick like many of the Trekkies/Trekkers I've known; I have to cut the crew much slack, because they are writers rather than physics majors, and plus they brought Trek back into the modern day and made it feel relevant again. I did voice mild dissent at some of the obviously bad physics ("Singularities don't work that way!") and a few of the moments where Trek became more popcorn flick than sci-fi. However, even these little moments give it charm, and I am endeared forever to the film.

(Thank you, J.J. Abrams and company!)

I kept buzzing with amazement at how excellent Zachary Quinto performs the Spock character. Indeed, the actor has made me wish for the first time in seven years that I had television, so I could watch him on Heroes.

Funny moments they reveal on the commentary: My sister Beth and I giggled in the theatre when Kirk and Spock stand together on the Jellyfish. As Spock tries to give Kirk a message for Uhura in case comething happens to him, Kirk interrupts with a very Shatneresque "Spahhhck!" It turns out that this was intentional, a nod to the Shat himself as the originator of the Kirk role. Chris Pine also echoes this later as he enters the bridge in the captain shirt for the first time and tosses off a Shatneresque "Bones!" Clever, clever.

Micro Fiction

Here is a sample of a micro fic I wrote for my MAF: Short Story class. It's semi-autobiographical, semi-fictional.

Votives

My little sister and I were allotted to my father twice a month after the divorce. “Every other weekend,” my father explained, pouring scotch into a smoky tumbler. I tripped after him, puppyish, eyes on the glittering bit of summer-colored alcohol in his hand. The gold ring he wore over the white furrow where the wedding band used to be contained a perfect tiger’s eye. It winked amber at me.

Papa let us stay up until midnight at his house, his contingency-plan furniture too small in the big rooms. By seven-thirty he was asleep next to Karin, who wadded herself against one shoulder of the couch. A second tumbler lounged in his long fingers, the first forgotten in the laundry room at half six. I plucked the glass out of his hand and set it in front of the fire with its twin. They glowed like the votives at Christmas Mass.

Later, when I was seventeen, the scotch glasses were seven, a votive procession through the house. My father’s voice now lounged and leaned like the glasses he forgot, all over the room. I cut my visits short three months shy of my eighteenth birthday.

Four years later, my estranged father’s voice clotted my answering machine one summer night: “Amy, I’m tired of fuckin’ around with ya. Give me a call!” His voice was grating, in a face-down on the floorboards sort of way. I pushed delete and made myself iced tea.

Auntie!

I'm an Auntie!

Welcome, to the first baby boy in our family! Happy birthday Owen James!

Snip Snip Boom

Alrighty, heavy opinion time.

I used to have long hair, ("long, beautiful hair, shoulder length or longer, hair down to there,") which I have since kept at shoulder-length or in bob form since the spring of 2006. After my favorite teacher passed away in Israel, I decided to chop off my locks as a sort of mourning ceremony for myself, as I didn't really get to say goodbye to him.

Long, Lara Croftian hair tends to pull down my face. I enjoy the bob, being very 1920s-esque, but just want a change. I was thinking going pixie short, with a punk twist. (I also love rockabilly hair, but it's way too much upkeep, with the curling and uncurling, pinning and twisting. I'm a minimalist in hair effort.) Ergo, I wanted to ask your opinion on... this:

The lovely and talented P!nk.

Pixie cut.

I'd like to go for these kinds of cuts, only without the platnium dye and with, you know, pants. So what do you think?

Stayin' Alive

I am still alive!

This semester has kicked my rear like no other semester before; all of the times I felt I was taxed for time back at NWC seems like a patty cake party in comparison. I came to the conclusion that I need to complain less, just buckle in, and have a good time 'tween semesters.

I think I'll like it here in Laramie. There's just enough western history, access to mountains and an urban setting (Denver,) and fast roads back to the places I am from. Laramie is a happy little hub. I also like that it's about the same age as Placerville, the place I'll always call home. Powell was nice, but it being founded in 1909, it seemed like a bit of a "whipper-schnapper" town. Plus, they have historic ghost tours around Halloween time, which is just boss. The ghost tours of Placerville were usually privately run by paranormal investigators who plug their book throughout. The ghost tour here features a hay ride, bad acting, and people earnestly trying to scare you while presenting a living history lesson. I am enamored with that sort of effort!

As for my first semester at "Yoo Dub," I had a hard time at first, as the professors are very... ah... established. They are the big boys of formal education, and they know it. As on the P'ville ghost tours, I was subjected to "I'm published" many times in the first two weeks of classes. I enjoy my German class immensely, as well as my science course, (the last one I'll ever take! No!). I am neutral about my lit. course; I learn a lot from it, but with an average of 100-125 pages to read a night, I am very ready for it to be done. My short story class is excellent for analysis of said literary form, but it lacks female authors, outside Eudora Welty.

Looking forward to next semester: book arts, German 1.2, literary survey, and finite mathematics. Optimism.

Haunted Thrift

I now have a job at a local thrift store; I started only one day before my untimely breakup, so for the first week of my job I went through the numb motions of learning the register and how to stock the floor. Fortunately for me, operating a thrift store can be done as easily as walking backwards over a flat surface. Junk pours in and out, the same people come in and shop, and the store's creed can be recited by rote with ease.

After several days I started to come more to life and notice the world around me.

I've always had an interesting time with antique and secondhand stores. Sometimes, when I touch or brush an object I get a strong emotional reaction. Some people call this phenomenon psychometry and think it belongs to the "realm of the supernatural.*" I, however, think it belongs to the realm of the preternatural, meaning that "we don't have a scientific explanation for it yet, but someday we will.*" I also get feelings from just being in a place or in close proximity to the object.

At the store I feel little more than the wash of emotions and activities of the living. However, sometimes when it is quiet or there is a low volume of people in the store the building speaks to me.

Sometimes I feel an acute loss of sunlight, a missing of dusty fields and anthills, of grasses blowing in the wind. This is what I would call a first layer of impression, there from a time before Laramie itself existed. After this is an impression of clanking iron, the dusty smell of horses, and the coarse shout of men calling to one another. I don't know what first existed in that spot, but I get the idea that there was a stable or a depot nearby. Indeed, the modern-day train yard is within viewing distance of the shop.

The third layer of impression I feel is that of music, centered in the shop itself. I know the thrift store is not the first business on the location, so perhaps it was a music shop at one time. The final layer is that of the thrift store itself, again with the myriad impressions of thousands of different things coming from hundreds of different origins.

However, there is something lucid that moves throughout the store, I believe, felt not only on the sales floor, but upstairs among the maze of boxes, donations, and empty clothing racks. Several of the employees there do not feel comfortable in the store by themselves or after dark; indeed, D. and J.2 have both said that they didn't feel alone when they closed for the night or opened in the morning. I myself feel that something is either watching or listening to me when I walk upstairs or back into the electronics and books area. Nothing bad, just watchful, curious, and maybe even a little annoyed.

Four days ago I knelt next to a shelf of books near closing time, the store quiet save for a few last-minute shoppers and J., our manager, talking with J.2 by the register. As I straightened the books, looking down at a lower shelf, someone brushed by me out of the electronics room, which is low-ceilinged and closed in, rather like a cave. I felt the pressure of this person's passing, and the rush of wind against my cheek and temple. I glanced sideways, seeing in my half-view a slender slip of a man walking quickly toward the front of the store, shoulders hunched, wearing dark clothes, perhaps charcoal gray. Thinking it was a customer that needed help, I patted the last book into place and turned to get up, hoping to intercept the man before he made it all the way to the register to ask for assistance, saving him a few feet.

As I turned I realized that the man was no longer there and could not have disappeared from view in the amount of time that it took me to turn. J. and J.2 still spoke by the register. The door to the upstairs was closed and had not opened. I stood there blinking for a moment, thinking that perhaps J. had walked by, for he is slender and tall, but he himself was leaning against the counter, completely at ease and still.

Quietly, I made a quick circuit of the store. The last few customers had already left, and no one was nearby. I didn't say anything and just went back to the books.

*From The Haunting, 1963

Dealing

I am coping with mine and Jeff's breakup, and though it is a little better every day I am not going to write about it online anymore, unless I have another insight to add. I wrote about it mainly to let all those whom I know and care about what happened, and now the rest of the emotional bruising I will deal with on my own.

I also wanted to let people know about the symptoms of emotional and verbal abuse, as I'd never experienced them before and felt that it was important for people to understand.

Once again, Jeff is an amazing person who was simply not truthful with himself and not truthful with me. I hope that he realizes how he needs to improve and how we could have worked together on our relationship if communication and faith had been the norm.

Henceforth, I will only write about this type of abuse in general, as I learn more about it and as I speak to counselors to help me through this "exiting" of a relationship.

Thank you all for your support and insights. They have helped me immensely in this difficult time, and I want my friends and family to know how very much you all mean to me. I hope that I can return the favor with love and insights for you all one day, albeit in happier circumstances!

Thank you again.